Israel is still on the defensive against war crimes allegations for their conduct in Gaza and it doesn't seem that the pressure will be going away anytime soon. The United Kingdom has announced that it is going to review all its weapons exports to Israel due to the war in Gaza and Ehud Olmert Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak and seven
senior Israel Defense Forces officers may
face war crimes charges in Norway.
Israel has been trying to clear its name. It is doubtful that the IDF's own investigation, which found that "no civilians were purposefully harmed by IDF troops during Operation Cast Lead," will do much to assuage critics, but Israel is taking a multimedia approach. The Israeli Consulate in New York City posted the following video on their blog earlier today as part of the information campaign. It is a slick video game-like simulation of the Israeli military fighting in Gaza: Many of the allegations in this video have been disproved elsewhere, such as UNRWA schools being used to fire missile attacks on Israel during the fighting. Others are clearly more complicated than come across in the video, like the tunnels. It is true, I'm sure, that some weapons have been brought into Gaza through the tunnels, but they are used much more often to bring in necessary food and supplies that Gazans are denied through the collective punishment of the siege on Gaza. But then again I guess video games aren't necessary known for their nuance. And neither is propaganda.
'Some weapons have been brought into Gaza through the tunnels.'
And what if they were? A basic responsibility of government is to defend its citizens against foreign attack. Israel's targeted assassinations have killed hundreds of innocent bystanders. The Palestinian Authority is impotent against these atrocities. If Hamas has managed to import some armaments, it is no crime, and no less than any responsible authorities would do.
Gaza doesn't just need rebuilding aid. It needs drones of its own, to take out Israeli war criminals at will; as well as better, more sophisticated rockets. This will occur in time, making the Israeli apartheid wall as obsolete as the Maginot Line.
Arm the homeless Gazans.
Jim,
Google "Vojna Krajina" for the last time an isolated ethnic minority with imperial designs and chauvinistic ideology decided to make war on a state allied to the US, with long-range rockets.
They can become Sinai Bedouin if they turn up the heat enough. "Arm the Gazans" was a crap strategy from '49'-'67, and it eventually got Egypt out of the Gaza terror business, only costing them the cities along the Suez Canal. As long as Jews get to suffer, that's fine with the Islamofascists, though.
The US should defend Gaza from Israel as generously as it defends Israel from Gaza.
Check out J Street's YouTube attack on Avigdor Lieberman. For those old enough to remember, tell me if the photography of Lieberman reminds of Senator Joe McCarthy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtuKO06RAqo
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_McCarthy.jpg
As long as they are dragging some of those sorry excuses of human beings, please remind them of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, C Powell, Wolfewitz etc.
Hey, wait a sec, maybe they could put Henry Kissinger in the mix. Some of us have not forgotten our shame.
Basically, the Norwegians have chosen sides. They have announced that they will oppose Israel even when it wages a limited, technology-rich precision war against genocidal terrorists. They are the heirs of Quisling. One of the hardest things Israel always has to deal with with Scandanavians is figuring out what is "diktatura de la posa" and what is real. Iran's .357 critique of Olof Palme for threatening to halt arms exports is cynically remembered by Israelis nostalgic for Lillehammer.
I love the idea of Haygood's "arm the Gazans." Give 'em machetes and let them all hack each other to bits, Hutustyle!
That was some chilling propaganda.
I like the idea of them hacking the israelis to pieces.
My rather extensive experience with Arabs suggests that they not so good at killing, weapons or not. Give them arms and they'll just blow themselves up.
Because every time someone let loose at me with an AK-47 in Nahalat Shiva, there was a boop-boop-boop sound and a thin ray of light from the muzzle of the gun to the horizon.
Dover Tzahal needs to get whoever did "World in Conflict" to do their Gaza videogame. Heck, even the Syrian "Al-Aksa Defender" videogame is more realistic.
I wonder where the Hamas investigation is?
BTW Adam, I believe that UNRWA also admitted later that no shells landed inside their compound.
BTW Adam, I believe that UNRWA also admitted later that no shells landed inside their compound.
Wrong
link to youtube.com
I wonder where the Hamas investigation is?
Here
link to youtube.com
You're really a creepy one, JES.
@Eurosabra
No, we are not the heirs of Quisling. We killed the bastard. The crime he was sentenced to death for was not treason, but his cooperation with the Nazis in sending 800 Jews to the gas chambers. My mother risked her life in helping Jews to escape to Sweden, and I take offence at your desecrating her memory. Shame on you.
They are ????
Why ?
Lillehammer affair is still the only incidence of terrorism in Norway, committed by MoSSad. A sane person would feel shame or disgust for this heinous crime—you feel nostalgia. Still you wonder why anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe. Look in the mirror, there is the answer.
MRW, I'll see you and raise you:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0204/gaza.html
Again, I'm looking for a Hamas internal investigation. BTW, in the first YouTube you link to, UNRWA's John Ging states clearly that there are rules of war and all sides are bound by them. So, where is the Hamas investigation of its possible use of civilians as human shields, of its purposely targetting civilian targets and of its clear violations in its treatment of Gilad Shalit?
and in recent news…..Israel defies US and destroys Palestinian home
By Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem
link to independent.co.uk
@JES
And who brought the buildings down ? The big Bad Wolf ?
The UNRWA building in Gaza hit
by the Israeli Defense Forces
Only madmen and fools are stupid enough to deny what everybody can see. You might if you want try to justify the action, but deny it took place? That's insane and deprives you of any credibility you might have left. On second though-you don't have much to lose.
The Barak report yesterday of the internal review of IDF behavior was a sad whitewash.
Its always a dilemma as to how honestly to investigate and report diversions from just war practises. Its always lauded by malevolent opportunists as a propaganda tool, rather than a sincere attempt to self-review and reform.
It is telling to me that Hamas has never publicly stated "our fighter acted unethically" even.
I wish there was more intent to reconcile, than to win.
Dag, I didn't deny that that shelling took place, and that wasn't the case that John Ging was referring to (which took place about a week earlier, and for which UNRWA later had to issue a retraction) in which several people were killed.
What you are apparently stupid enough not to see is that this was an entirely different case in an entirely different place and, moreover, it was one that the IDF readily admitted to. Futher, it was one in which there were no civilians killed.
So Dag, I would say that you have lost what little credibility you have by apparently swallowing the propaganda of Hamas shills hook, line and sinker without, apparently, even bothering to look at either MRW's link or mine.
Actually Jes, one person did die (a child) in that attack on the UN compound. I've seen the pictures and video clips, with the dried blood splattered on the walls and the white phosphorus that was still burning.
If you say so Shafiq. In the meantime, not sure that this has been posted here but it's worth getting an expert opinion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WssrKJ3Iqcw
I wish there was more intent to reconcile, than to win.
Posted by: Richard Witty | April 23, 2009 at 03:09 AM
Hell. I'd be satisfied with just the intent to win, instead of the actual intent of ethnically cleansing Israel of Jews, preferably by genocide.
@JES
Wrong.
It was NOT UNRWA, but
The Toronto Globe and Mail and the Australian Newspaper:
An educated guess: You have your disinformation from Camera I must warn you against quoting the garbage produced by these extremists, as you can see it creates all kind of problems for you and your fellow brownshirts.
Dag,
Only indictments against Israelis, after two years of Hamas-directed indiscriminate bombardments of Israel. So only Jews can commit war crimes. This isn't an impartial investigation, it's a deliberate choosing of sides against a state and a people in a war for survival. Looks like you've just Quisled a bit.
Olof Palme's fate is an indication of what happens to Scandinavians government figures who piss off Iran, which is probably why Hamas figures are going to remain unindicted. So Norway is craven and biased as well as powerless.
Lillehammer is an example of what happens when Jews are forced to provide justice for themselves. Unfortunately, Norway seems ready to try to inflict more injustice on the Jewish people, who apparently only have themselves to blame.
An educated guess….
You're not very educated, and you should keep guessing. The Globe and Mail and the Australian did publish a retraction. However, what both papers had printed originally was that Mr. Ging maintained that the UNRWA school had been targetted and that the shells had landed inside the school compound. What in fact happened is that UNRWA managed to weasle out of this by claiming they were misquoted, and for this the papers issued a retraction and correction, stating that Mr. Ging had been referring to an attack on a different school on the same day in which three people had been killed in the compound.
However, the Globe and Mail never issued a retraction for the rest of the story, an account of which appears in Ha'aretz (which I trust is less "brownshirtted" than Camera) from February 3, 2009 under the title: "UN backtracks on claim that deadly IDF strike hit Gaza school":
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1061189.html
I will quote from this article pretty much in full so there's no mistake:
The United Nations has reversed its stance on one of the most contentious and bloody incidents of the recent Israel Defense Forces operation in Gaza, saying that an IDF mortar strike that killed 43 people on January 6 did not hit one of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency schools after all.
It seems that the UN has been under pressure to put the record straight after doubts arose that the school had actually been targeted. Maxwell Gaylord, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Jerusalem, said Monday that the IDF mortar shells fell in the street near the compound, and not on the compound itself.
Gaylord said that the UN "would like to clarify that the shelling and all of the fatalities took place outside and not inside the school."
Senior IDF officials had previously expressed skepticism that the school had been struck, saying that two mortar shells could not kill 43 people and wound dozens more.
Questions about the veracity of the claims that the school had been hit by the IDF were also raised last week by the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail. The newspaper said that a teacher in the UNRWA compound at the time of the strike "was adamant" that no people had been killed inside the compound.
The newspaper quoted the teacher as saying that, "I could see some of the people had been injured… But when I got outside, it was crazy hell. There were bodies everywhere, people dead, injured, flesh everywhere."
The newspaper said that the teacher had been told by the UN not to speak to the media. "Three of my students were killed," he said. "But they were all outside."
@ Euro
"Lillehammer is an example of what happens when Jews are forced to provide justice for themselves. Unfortunately, Norway seems ready to try to inflict more injustice on the Jewish people, who apparently only have themselves to blame."
Are Palestinians ever forced to provide justice for themselves? Just asking.
So, Norway is a state we should all fear as fascist, racist, selfish, not at all concerned with justice?
Did I get that right?
The Palestinians long ago decided that justice required that Jews live in Palestine on sufferance, without raising their heads. Mob violence became commonplace after the Tanzimat reforms and the Mandate abrogated Islamic supremacy, the Palestinians, like the Iranians and Algerians, and unlike the Moroccans, have decided to re-introduce it, and have consistently attempted to apply it. In the course of attempting to impose their vision of a just, Islamic Palestine from the river to the sea, they failed to subjugate Palestine's Jewish community. In the course of that action, some innocent Palestinian Jews were deprived of housing and property in East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, while some innocent Palestinian Muslims were deprived of housing and property elsewhere in the Land of Israel/Palestine.
As there is no common court, common narrative, or even a state of civil peace on the ground, the matter is likely to remain moot.
Norway was quite content to provide Israel with the Trojan Horse of the Oslo Accords.
You fear only that Norway may not have the power to harm Israel. I don't care what you fear, I only point out that the hypocrisy and cravenness is obvious to Israelis, and feel sorrow that another European state is being lobbied to take its civil society's opposition to Israel's government to the realm of policy.
"Crimes against the Jewish people" is an indictable offense in Israel, perhaps the Norwegian government should meditate on whether indicting Israeli public figures alone for the violation of putative international law qualifies.
@ Euro
Thank you for telling me what I fear. Otherwise, how would I know? Did we talk yesterday in my home? I don't think so. And thanks again for not answering any of my questions, which popped in my mind following your earlier post, which I quoted. For the rest of the readers here, especially
the Americans, it seems appropriate to refer you to what you have been supporting for a long time, a state that does not even recognize as a practical matter, nor in its superstructure, the rule of equality before the law in the Western sense–hell, it doesn't even recognize Israeli as a descriptive for nationality: link to radicalpress.com
Is it any wonder, given this state of affairs in Israel, that some people might confuse Jew with
Israeli? What other country defines so many civil rights by referring to a law of return for Jews,
and simultaneously rejects the same concept for the dispossessed in the land in which they
are citizens, not to mention in the land their people have lived on for generations?
Americans need to factor in such information to understand exactly what our representatives are supporting in our name. Unless you Americans think nobody in the rest of the world notices. Did your ancestors die on the beaches of Normandy for this? In Iraq? Will you die fighting Persia for this? Not an idle question.
"They have advertised this state for forty years as essential to the existence of Jewish culture, people, heritage; they have tried with all their cunning to advertise Israel as a no-choice reality when, in fact, it is an option, to be examined in terms of quality and value. And when you dare to examine it like this, what do you actually find? Arrogance! Arrogance! Arrogance! And beyond the arrogance? Nothing! And beyond the nothing more arrogance! And now it is there for the whole world to see on television a primitive capacity for sadistic violence that has finally put the lie to all their mythology! 'The Law of the Return'? As if any self-respecting civilized Jew would want to 'return' to a place like this! 'The Ingathering of the Exiles'? As if 'exile' from Jewishness begins to describe the Jewish condition anywhere but here! 'The Holocaust'? The Holocaust is over. Unbeknownst to them, the Zionists themselves officially declared it over three days ago at Manara Square in Ramallah. I will take you there and show you the place where the decree was written. A wall where the soldiers took innocent Palestinian civilians and clubbed and beat them to a pulp. The end of the Holocaust is written on that wall in Palestinian blood."
..philip roth
So tell us, Eurosabra…why is it only Jewish criminals, Jewish garbage who move to Israel?
Citizen,
One should recognize that the Norwegians are not accusing everyone, they are accusing Israelis alone. And so far, it is not a state action. The practical effect of these requests is to bar certain Israelis access to the EU, because their presence becomes untenable even if a request for a warrant is only being debated in a court.
The other question is why the rest of the world should feel allowed to prescribe Israeli citizenship law, when states such as Ireland, Greece, Germany, Hungary, etc. have Diaspora preferences of their own. The fact is that Jewish expellees of the West Bank in '49 were denied Jordanian citizenship as succession from the Mandate, while Palestinians previously resident in Israel received it. You paint a Treaty of Lausanne situation as original sin. The other question is that Israeli nationality–unlike Israeli citizenship–does not exist as such because Israeli citizens are members (variously) of the Jewish, Arab, Armenian, Russian, Circassian, Greek, Druze, Samaritan, and Bosnian nations, although not all of these may be formal designations.
Theorists of liberal nationalism have often noted that ethno-national states may continue to exist, justly, when they guarantee the RIGHTS of all their citizens, while still favoring the INTERESTS of the group most closely identified with the state. Israel, like most post-colonial states embroiled in war, has failed in that respect. But if the world accepts that civil rights are an internal concern of Iran's, it should do the same for Israel.
So, tell us Rykart why is it that crab lice like you continue to post here?
JES
Guess you don't read too good. This is an anti-Zionist site.
Why not return to your Meir Kahane group, where you're always welcome?
An innocent Moroccan waiter gets killed while walking with his pregnant wife? Maybe these people shouldn't be in charge of "providing justice".
And BTW, aren't you conflating Jews and the Israeli government here? I'm sure you wouldn't want to be reinforcing the anti-semitic canard that they are one and the same, would you?
Munich was a farce, and the fact that the Germans apprehended the surviving terrorist murderers and then let them go as part of a hijacking deal that may have been set up at the instigation of the German government itself pretty much meant that all bets were off. In fact, the State of Israel's payment of a settlement to Bouchiki's widow and daughter is the ONLY legal action that has resulted in ANY forum towards a resolution of the claims and damages resulting from Munich, Operations Wrath of God, Springtime of Youth, and their aftermath. So of ALL the injustices of Munich and its aftermath, on all sides, only for Bouchiki's hit have reparations been made.
I assume that the distinction is useless as long as Jews somewhere live dependent on the sufferance of Gentiles. The Roma are an example of what happens when a people is dependent everywhere, and there will always be enough bombs in Turkish, French, and Tunisian synagogues.
Anyone who goes to the trouble of reading the citizenship laws of the various states Eurosabra claims are like Israel's
(available on the net) will find she is wrong. For a time, Germany had a similar ethnic German right of return to absorb
the millions of Germans that were booted out of various eastern european countries after WW2, but that aspect of German
citizenship law no longer exists.