Yossi Melman has revealed in Ha’aretz that the Iron Dome missile, developed at great expense and fanfare by Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, will not be used to protect the southern Israeli towns of Sderot and Ashkelon, the mission for which it was presumably developed. This in spite of a pledge by the Obama Administration to provide $205 million for its development and deployment. It is now apparent that Iron Dome will be instead used for army bases only in Israel and will be sold to Singapore, which partially funded its development.
The revelation that Iron Dome will not be used for Sderot is the conclusion of an extraordinarily cynical and exploitive episode for Israel’s security establishment.
For the past several years, the southern Israeli town of Sderot and Ashkelon suffered attacks by Qassam missile launched from Gaza by Hamas militants. As I followed the news, it hurt to hear the stories of the individuals, including children, maimed or killed at random. (This was before my internet reading began to take in a detailed look at the Palestinian suffering in Gaza due to the IDF as well.) I remember the story of a student at Sapir College, Roni Yechiah, a father of four who was killed in the parking lot. Twenty-eight deaths and hundreds of injuries have been caused by the Qassam attacks.
Where was the much-vaunted Israeli ingenuity? Israel has done great things, most famously Operation Entebbe, where hijacked Israelis were rescued from Entebbe, Uganda in 1976. This was straightforward and morally uncomplicated. Israelis were in mortal danger, and the security establishment formulated a plan to save them and it was executed brilliantly. With the Qassam missiles against Sderot, a plan of rescue was clearly visible, and discussed in the media, yet year after year rolled by without any sort of defense of the population.
How hard is defense against short-range rockets?
Short range missiles and mortars can be stopped with a reasonable, 80-90% success rate using a Gatling gun guided by radar. The US and international forces in Iraq have used a system called C-RAM , which is a variant of the system usually used on ships to provide a last-ditch defense against missiles. Defense Minister Ehud Barak evaluated the gun-based system, also called Vulcan-Phalanx, and determined that it was the only system which was available to protect Sderot as a community. Independent experts evaluated that the number of gun emplacements needed to protect the city was three or four. No Vulcan-Phalanxes have, as of yet, been obtained or deployed.
The Road Not Travelled
In other words, the defense of Sderot, or lack thereof, was a relatively small issue to the defense establishment, which has focused on Iran for some years. The Israeli Air Force has preferred to spend its resources on offensive capabilities, such as additional fighter planes, not defensive capabilities. However, the failure to address defense of Sderot ultimately led to the need for an offensive solution. Operation Cast Lead was the invasion of Gaza, conducted Dec. 27, 2008 to Jan 18, 2009.
When the invasion happened, I followed it superficially on American television. I had known about the attacks on Sderot, so I felt that it was definitely morally justified. It was a real pity that Israel hadn’t pursued the sensible path of defense, but still, Hamas had chosen to fire missiles at Israel, and the moral responsibility was on them. It took until 2010 before I began to look into the criticism that I had been hearing.
Operation Cast Lead, according to Norman Finkelstein, wasn’t a war at all, but a totally one-sided massacre of a defenseless population. Hamas killed a total of 4 Israeli soldiers, compared with 1,417 Palestinians, one-third of whom were children. Furthermore, the apparently “moral” actions of the IDF, such as warning Palestinian civilians via text messages, or hitting buildings with missiles that lacked warheads, as a warning (so called “knock-on-the-roof”) It became clear that this was window dressing meant for the media, and it fact horrific war crimes were taking place. As revealed by the Israeli group Breaking the Silence, the plan was to kill 2000 “terrorists”, with little distinction made as to who was really a terrorist.
The result of Operation Cast Lead was condemnation throughout Europe and the rest of the world. The Gaza invasion badly damaged Israeli moral standing and credibility. It was considered to be a tactical victory but a strategic failure.When one considers that Hamas barely fought at all during the war, calling it a “tactical victory” is rather ridiculous.
When you look at the admitted strategic failure of Operation Cast Lead, you have to turn back to what could have been, had it been decided to use missile defense. Had the numbers of casualties been radically less, even if not zero, there would not have been the political impetus for the invasion of Gaza. Israel gave itself grave moral damage, and devastated thousands of Palestinian lives, in part because of a self-oriented defense community that lied to itself and to the Israeli public about its intentions.
Why did this happen?
Yossi Melman has chronicled this story for three years, and feels that the story has come to its conclusion. He wrote,
Suggestions for an intermediate (rocket defense) solution until Iron Dome was ready, including cheaper and more accessible systems such as the Vulcan Phalanx, which has proved its ability to intercept missiles in Iraq and Afghanistan, or restarting the development of a laser cannon, were rejected by defense ministry bureaucrats with lies.
There are suspicions that this was done out of the concern that the Vulcan and laser could actually work and their success would have torpedoed Iron Dome.
And here the story ends. In 2010, Rafael partially fulfilled its mission in record time. It developed a model which is stored at a southern Israel air force base, and a few more launchers at other bases. But the army refuses to deploy them to protect the home front.
GOC Northern Command Gadi Eizenkot recently made this point clear as day, stating that Iron Dome is not meant to defend civilians, but only army bases. In other words, an army general has admitted that everything that has been said to the public about the purpose of the billion shekel investment in the Iron Dome project to improve public security is one big lie.
The behavior of the army and the defense system in this affair is shamelessly cynical, proof of the contempt of bureaucrats and decision-makers for the public and its money, and who have the feeling that they can make fools of the public without being asked to give explanations and without taking responsibility for their actions.
What does this say about the defense establishment, and the morality of decision making processes? If the events of Entebbe in 1976 took place today, would the response have been a confused mess, indecision, political infighting, and ultimate failure? The story of the failure to defend Sderot shows that when it comes to security the “tail wags the dog”. The politics of the defense industry and the military had more relative importance that the safety of the citizens of the south.
The non-defense of Sderot also strongly suggests that the leadership felt that attacks on Sderot were more advantageous as a source of sympathy for Israel than was the imperative to defend the citizens. This issue of Israel seeing advantage in enabling its enemies, in order to generate world sympathy, has been seen in other conflicts. It shows that the Israeli leadership is distracted from straightforward, logical solutions to security problems and is pursuing interests other than the issue at hand.
Robert is the first name of an investor who has studied physics and aerospace and follows Israel issues. He lived in Israel as a toddler and honeymooned there three years ago.
Its hard to know the reasoning behind not employing the specific solution that you identified. Apparently, there is more concern about larger and more accurate missiles from Iran and Lebanon than from small projectiles from Gaza.
I think it is accurate to state that the Israeli military thinks of rockets from Iran and Lebanon as deadly, whereas the rockets from Gaza as super-mosquitos, mostly not deadly but definitely terrorizing.
And, I expect that their assessment includes the reasoning of whether its worth spending a great deal of money to knock out a $600 rocket that can do some damage, or a great deal of money to knock out a $50,000 rocket that can do a great deal of lethal and strategic damage.
I don’t know the details, and have no experience with the strategic decision-making, but on the surface it doesn’t seem like a cynical decision as you described.
I also think that you’ve got the sequence wrong relative to Sderot and Gaza in 2008. Norman Finkelstein leaves out a great deal in his analysis, and selects a rationally Palestinian interpretation, but not necessarily a representive complete interpretation.
Specifically, there was a war and there was a massacre.
That is that as a result of the Hamas and other factions’ shelling of Sderot, then Ashkelon and Ashdod before any Israeli air or ground assault following the end of the ceasefire, it was necessary for Israel to address the actions militarily. It was not legal, nor acceptable, nor responsible, to require civilians to live in air raid shelters for weeks or prospectively months on end.
And, as Hamas and factions had successfully undertaken damaging guerilla responses to Israeli ground assaults, it was a rational Israeli military attitude to consider that Hamas did have military capability to exact great damage to ground troups. Some Hamas officials did announce publicly during that period of escalation of shelling, that they would wipe the Gazan streets in Israeli blood.
Maybe, Israeli intelligence was out to lunch, and genuinely should have known better than to believe Hamas militia spokesmen, but they did apparently.
Maybe I’m wrong, and they only used that as an excuse for a solely sadistic exercise. I don’t think that I am, though I’m also certain that there are idiots within the Israeli military that did hold Gazans as “invisible men” and sought an opportunity to stick it to them.
My point is that I believe that the answer remains unknown in fact, and that “war” was descriptive AND that following the discovery that Hamas was not as well armed as anticipated, and after they decided to hide rather than even undertake guerilla actions, that continued aggression did more resemble a masacre, especially with questionable targeting relative to revised military objectives.
let me see if I understand you Witty:
even tho 12 rabbis traveled to Washington and spoke with Dennis Ross and Rahm Emanuel, from whom the promise of $203 million US taxpayer dollars was extracted for an Iron Dome to protect Sderot, it is reasonable that Iron Dome NOT be used to defend Sderot from “a $600 rocket that can do some damage.”
But it IS reasonable to wage a war on Gaza and kill nearly 1500 Palestinians and destroys hundreds of homes and millions of dollars in infrastructure, in response to “some damage that was done by $600 rockets.”
Have I got that about right — your reasoning, that is?
The larger question is, in what realm of the real world does that reasoning make sense to you?
RW,
Regarding cost, the ammunition for the Vulcan-Phalanx is a few tens of dollars, which is proportionate with the Qassam missile. Also, with missile defense, you should compare the cost with what would be destroyed, or the cost of Operation Cast Lead itself, and the cost of Israel’s international image. You don’t just compare against the cost of the Qassam.
2008: Excess vs massacre vs rational defense.
In real time, none of those costs are confidently known. That is the relevant basis of criticism, what could have been done with the information known at the time, what decisions were made.
Norman engages in a great deal of condemnatory judgement after the fact, rather than in real time. Its apples and oranges.
The cost assessment of the alternative missile shields, was not about 2008 costs, but current. The military logic might be out to lunch, or it might contain some considerations that you and I are not aware of.
I’m not really sure what your point is.
Witty, if you were throwing around wording like “Excess vs massacre vs rational defense” when talking about what Germany did when they used such use of military force on civilian Jewish populations (or French, or Polish, or British, or…) then you would be labelled a Holocaust denier. And rightly so.
That you use your verbiage to justify the outright slaughter of Arabs instead of Jews, what does that make you instead?
Good decisions matter.
The decision to conduct an excessive military response was a bad one, with two consequences.
1. Israel is hated by Gazans who are still isolated and struggling to get their feet back on the ground
2. Gazans have mostly stopped shelling Israeli civilians.
And, there is very very little parallel between Germany/Jews and Israel/Gazans.
The appeal to the comparison should be urge Israel to change its policies and practices (“look what you may become if you continue in this vein.”)
If that parallel accomplishes a change in Israeli behavior, wonderful. I think when the accusation (exageration) is used as an assault, it has the oppossite effect on Israeli public opinion.
For God’s sake, Chaos, don’t call it a Holocaust!” None of the costs are confidently known! ” Oh wait! It was Jews, I forgot! Every death counts, in that case.
False Witty.
Israel planned this 6 months in advance. It wasn’t an emergency response to unforeseen and unpredicted rocket attacks.
What a stupid argument. Of course it is after the fact. How is anyone to know what is happening in real time unless they are in Gaza or in the IDF Command center?
And how does the fact that Finks observations came after the fact make them less credible?
Israel isn’t hated just by the Gazans, Witty, for the atrocities they committed in Gaza. And elsewhere, for that matter.
Correction: Israel is hated by far more than just Gazans as a result and has lost what little support and sympathy it had left after 2006.
That condition already existed when Israel broke the ceasefire.
It’s actually very similar Witty.
Why do you never complete your sentences Witty?
Compared to what Witty? Smothering the Israeli public with kisses like Bush 43 did? That gave us Lebanon 2006 and Gaza 2008.
>> … whereas the rockets from Gaza as super-mosquitos, mostly not deadly but definitely terrorizing.
Rockets from Gaza aren’t terrorizing – they’re just “a migration”.
Interesting to note that Witty doesn’t consider Palestinians to be “terrorized” if they are dead. Or merely homeless, apparently. His Jewish self-determination demands your poverty, Arabs!
” Witty doesn’t consider Palestinians to be “terrorized” if they are dead.”
Of course they’re not “terrorized”. They’re dead. And isn’t that the best an Arab can be?
If only those Palestinians would just jump into the sea so that white upper middle class Jews of European descent can enjoy their secular “right of return” to the land that God gave them? Oh wait, actually, they can’t even do that — the Israeli blockade would shell them as soon as they congregated on the shore.
Richard Witty, Unfortunately you are mistaken. Finkelstein had it right, it was an all out massacre perpetrated and instigated by Israel. The Egypt-brokered ceasefire was breached by Israel on the 4th November 2008 – that can even be found in some MSM outlets you don’t have to look very hard!
AdamI – RW has been told this over and over and over again, but his mind is impervious to information; it does not enter; it is blocked by clogs of misinformation and lies.
Yes AdamI,
Witty will ignore any mention of 4th November 2008, and when he does, he blames Hamas for not taking it on the chin and showing poor discipline by responding to Israel’s attack. When I asked him what he believed Israel would have done had the roles been reversed (ie. Hamas conducted a raid inside Tel Aviv, killing 6 Israeli Jews) he had no problem asserting that Israel would be obliged to respond forcefully.
So you see, in the mind of a Zionist propagandist hack like Witty, self defense is the exclusive domain of Israel, and Palestinians are required to stand still when Israel gives them a bloody nose (otherwise Israel would have to defend itself of course).
RW,
It’s funny watching you desperately run around putting out fires on this topic, with this report debunking and making a completely mockery of your lies re Gaza 2008 attack by Israel.
Its not hard to know the reasoning behind not employing defenses for Sderot. as Tzipi Livni said in 2008, a long ceasefire with Hamas is not in Israel’s strategic interests, so obviously, Israel decided long ago that Sderot would be sacrificed for strategic reasons.
Those missiles are only a threat if Israel makes good on it’s promise to attack either one, otherwise, there is no threat.
Is this the official policy of Israel or did you just make that up? Until now, you have described the rocket attacks as deadly. Why the change of tone Witty?
As we always expected, you are lying. Iron Dome was instigated for the very reason to protect Israel from rocket attacks as well as larger missile attacks.
No it’s absolutely accurate as reports suggest. You have presented many creative versions of events, none of which have had any basis in fact, none of which have been supported by any reports.
No he does not leave out any detail Witty. Finkelstein’s analysis is entirely supported by facts, records and reports of the events. What he leaves out are your made up events that have been reported nowhere.
And shy did the ceasefire end Witty? Answer: Because Israel violated it on November 4th and attacked Gaza, killing 6 Palestinians.
Gaza truce broken as Israeli raid kills six Hamas gunmen
link to guardian.co.uk
Nor was it legal, nor acceptable, nor responsible for Israel to break a 4 months ceasefire and attack Gaza knowing very well that this would subject the residents of Sderot to rocket attacks.
False again. Israel knew very well that Hamas did not have the military capability to exact great damage to ground troups.
Hamas officials also proposed a return to ceasefire which Israel rejected.
If they believed this inflated rhetoric, there would have been no ground invasion.
Bingo.
Yes you are wrong Witty, and you know you’re wrong, which is why you have no facts to support your version of events. All you’ve ever been able to do is present a thesis based on pure speculation as to what the IDF command was thinking, and based on deliberate omissions beginning with Israel’s violation of the ceasefire on November 4th.
The answer is not unknown in fact. Isreal had already threatened to visit a “little shoah” on Gaza and had been planning this attack more than 6 months in advance. All of this has been widely reported.
Israeli leaders wanted to massacre Gaza and the public loved them for it.
I hope that in future, Phil censors your post on this topic. You’ve been allowed to perpetuate these lies for more than a year.
Wrong Witty.
The missile shield is intended to exclusively defend military bases, irrespective of whether the attacks are in the form of rockets from Gaza or cruise missiles from Iran.
All of your assertions rest on one “fact”/interpretation. That is what was the substance of the November 4 skirmishes?
Your interpretation matches the perspective from the ground in Gaza, what is perceived at that level.
Does it match from the perspective of residents of Sderot? (Many Sderot residents acknowledge the unnecessary aggression and tragedy of Gazan closure, but their perspective on rocket fire is very different.)
The reason I say “interpretation” is that the question you address is “what does this MEAN?”, not what occurred.
Everyone (I included) describe that an Israeli raid occurred on November 4, while there was a cease-fire in effect. A fact.
Does that mean that the cease-fire was over? That Israel regarded it as over? or that Hamas regarded it as over?
It is also a fact that Hamas itself officially only resumed shelling Israeli towns after the legal cease-fire term, and it did escalate to longer range rockets, and before Israel launched an organized air and ground assault, and then later unilaterally stopped.
Wrong Witty. All of my assertions rest on one facts and reports. The substance of the November 4 attack by Israel is reported in the link I provided – you know, links as is those things you never use?
My interpretation matches the reality as per all reports and Israel’s own MFA reports. I don’t give a crap about perspective. Reading a time-line is not matching the perspective from the ground in Gaza.
Why Witty? Do clocks run in the reverse in Sderot? Did Israel attack Gaza or Sderot on November 4th 2008?
Yes, unknown to them, their government is using them as human shields.
Yes I know what you’re saying Witty. The facts and the reports don’t give you a leg to stand on, so what you are resorting to is what people’s opinions were at the time. The same tactic is used by those who lied us into the Iraq war, when they claimed that “everyone believed Saddam had WMD”, even though they were the ones who led everyone to believe it.
Does that mean that the cease-fire was over? That Israel regarded it as over? or that Hamas regarded it as over?
Yes, it does. A ceasefire is a commitment/contact by both sides to withhold military attacks on the other. Israel violated that agreement, hence, they broke the contract.
False. Hamas resumed shelling immediately. There waa 11 mortar attacks in October (no rockets fired) and in November that number went to 125 rockets and 68 mortars.
There was no official resumption of rocket attacks.
False. The longer range rockets followed Israel’s air assault.
It’s no surprise why you are so reticent to ever provide sources Witty. You are simply a BS artist.
The rockets were fired first on desert, then Ashkelon, then Ashdod (each longer range) before Israel responded with air and ground assault.
The rockets fired on Beersheva occurred after.
False Witty. There were no rockets being fired when Israel attacks Gaza on November 4th 2008.
And FYI, the longer range rockets came AFTER Israel’s follow up aerial campaign.
How many times must your lied be corrected Witty?
Good switch Shingo, skillful.
I was responding to your last comment that the longer range rockets only were used after the air assault.
Switch? Really, Witty? So tell us, how is a raven like a writing desk?
You were lying regardless.
From the Telegraph:
“Gaza conflict timeline
Gaza timeline:
by Tim Butcher in Jerusalem 4:28PM GMT 28 Dec 2008
* 2006 Jan: Islamist group Hamas wins the Palestinian parliamentary election in January 2006. Fatah refuse to handover power and tensions between the factions rise.
* 2006 Feb: Tit for tat exchanges intensify between Palestinian militants in Gaza firing rockets and Israeli forces using artillery and airstrikes.
* 2006 Jun: Palestinian militants from Gaza tunnel under perimeter fence into Gaza and capture Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit. He remains a prisoner.
* 2006 Jun: Israel launches operation Summer Rains to try to free Shalit, attacking targets in Gaza from the air and then launching relatively small ground offensive.
* 2006 Jul: Attention shifts from Gaza to Lebanon after Hizbollah militants captured two Israeli soldiers and Israel responded with its full military might. At least 1,100 people in Lebanon and 157 Israelis are killed in 34 days of fighting.s attacks on targets across Gaza 29 Dec 2008
Miliband voices ‘grave concern’ over Gaza attacks 29 Dec 2008
Israel calls up troops amid signs of ground assault 28 Dec 2008
Israel poised for ground assault on Gaza 28 Dec 2008
North Korea’s conflict with the South: timeline28 Dec 2008
* 20RELATED ARTICLES
Israel pounds Gaza before possible ground assault 29 Dec 2008
Israel widen06 Nov: Israel launches operation Autumn Clouds sending ground troops in to Gaza to try to deal with militants firing rockets.
* 2006 Dec: Fatah-Hamas fighting intensifies. Three brothers, aged 3, 6 and 9, are killed by masked gunmen aiming to kill their father, a Fatah security officer.
* 2007 Mar: BBC’s Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston kidnapped as Fatah- Hamas tension leads to breakdown in law and order.
*2007 Jun: After months of skirmishes, Hamas ousts Fatah in a bloody battle for power. Fatah gunmen flee to Israel.
* 2007 Jul: Alan Johnston is freed. Hamas takes the credit.
* 2007 Nov: Peace talks restarted with Israel and moderate Palestinians represented by Fatah under Annapolis process. Hamas is sidelined from talks.
* 2008 Sep: Annapolis process stalls and Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, forced to stand down early over a corruption scandal.
* 2008 Jun: With Egyptian mediation, Hamas and Israel agree to a six- month ceasefire in Gaza with militants saying they will stop firing rockets while Israel says it will stop offensive operations.
* 2008 Nov: Israel breaks ceasefire by sending ground troops into Gaza. Rocket fire resumes sparking exchanges.
* 2008 Dec 19: Attempts to renew ceasefire fail amid mutual recriminations.
* 2008 Dec 27: Israel launches operation Cast Lead attacking buildings and facilities connected to Hamas.”
Dick Witty says, “Maybe I’m wrong, and they only used that as an excuse for a solely sadistic exercise. I don’t think that I am, though I’m also certain that there are idiots within the Israeli military that did hold Gazans as “invisible men” and sought an opportunity to stick it to them.”
More objective people would agree Witty is willfully spouting rabid BS, for example, Mark Perry, co-director of the Conflicts Forum, a British-American group which mediates between the West and Islamist groups, including Hamas, stated on PBS’s “Newshour” (1/5/09) that contrary to US-Israeli propaganda, “During the six months of the cease-fire [agreed on between Israel and Hamas in June 2008], there were 153 violations of the cease-fire by Israel, and 36 Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israeli forces. Most important of all, the economic siege of Gaza continued.”
Or take what a senior Israeli military officer told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “For us, being cautious means being aggressive.” He said, “From the minute we entered, we’ve acted like we’re at war. That creates enormous damage on the ground… I just hope those who have fled the area of Gaza City in which we are operating will describe the shock. Maybe someone there will sober up before it continues.” (Haaretz, 1/7/09)
And if Witty’s looking for Israel’s conscious sadistic motive for Cast Lead he should consider that it was just a part of Israel’s on-going sadistic plan: The International Herald Tribune printed a quote from Moshe Yaalon in 2002, when he was chief of staff of the Israeli armed forces: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” (1/9/09).
UNRWA’s spokesperson, Christopher Gunness, said: “Where you have a direct hit on an UNRWA school where about 1,600 people had taken refuge, where the Israeli Army knows the coordinates and knows who’s there, where this comes as the latest in a catalogue of direct and indirect attacks on UNRWA facilities, there have to be investigations to establish whether war crimes have been committed,” as well, he added “as violations of international humanitarian law.” (NYT 1/18/09)
No maybe about it.
I am trying to put in image using HTML?
Eva ~ I also tried back on the page you mentioned it to Alec and likewise had no success. I don’t run a server but tried using online images accessible from a browser, which worked in a sandbox:
link to mondoweiss.net
This image has been tested in sandbox:
Thanks for the great analysis. Didn’t know the specifics of that military program.
Anyhow, please ask the next homeless person you meet (or person who got his home foreclosed) if they find it such a great idea to give 205 million of Americans tax dollars to a foreign country, with nothing in return except American aid workers killed in international waters (Furkan Dogan) and American kids maimed during protests (Tristan Anderson, Emily Hechonowicz).
Shocking. But why is this not surprising?
Reminds me of the homeless Holocaust survivors in Israel. Israel got and gets millions from Germany and other countries as Holocaust reparations. The State of Israel’s raison d’etre is, for many, the Holocaust – but the money doesn’t make it to the victims.
Like any corrupt country, international aid is intercepted by powerful gangs before it can reach its destination.
Israeli bureaucracy is inefficient and makes political decisions many of which are wrong. Is that breaking news? Thank you Melman for putting the information out there, and the next elections the people of Sderot and Israel will take it into account when they vote.
hoooold on there, bunky; that’s US money in them thar Iron domes.
We Americans bought us about $100 billion worth of say-so in Israeli affairs.
I say,
~move the settlers out of homes they have stolen; firmly establish Israel’s borders at 1967 lines, and MOVE Israeli Jews OUT of encroached properties. Propertiy may NOT be taken in conquest, and stolen property may NOT be retained by the thief. That’s basic.
~Sanction Israel until this is accomplished–with “sanctions that bite.” [karma's a b*&ch, ain't it?]
~Freeze Israeli accounts on NASDAQ
~Escrow Israeli assets and use them as reparations to victims of Israeli “inefficiencies and wrong political decisions” — including ethnic cleansing .
~require that Israeli leaders allocute before the United Nations, admitting and renouncing its racist policies, OR Israel forfeits the statehood granted to Israel by that United Nations.
the clock is ticking.
Israel is the biggest beneficiary of US foreign aid in American history, although it’s about the size of a NJ. It’s also the ony foreign state that has got so much without any specified strings attached. Plus there’s no historical cultural ties to it, as the US has, e.g., to England and France. And when has the IDf fought beside US grunts in any war?
When Israel’s % part of the Mandate land was decided by the UN Partition, it was a Great Deal for the Jews, considering the tiny % of Jewish property ownership at the time, and the total population of the Mandate Land. Especially considering further that All the Arabs living there at the time were natives. The civilized world should have joined by now to enforce in every way useful the 1967 borders as a practical and modestly fair compromise that, at the expense of Palestinians, still rewards Israel for its theft of more than a reasonable amount of the Mandate Land in the aftermath of Nuremberg and Geneva, takes into account the birth of Jews there since 1948, and constitutes a de facto and functional memorial for the Shoah. (Don’t forget Germans born decades after 1945 are still paying reparations to Israel.)On the other side, the least the Palestinians deserve is their own sovereign state, not a rump state, not basically a sovereign state in name only. And Israel, not the USA, should pay just compensation to dispossesed Palestinians, and officially apologize to them, and ROR formula should be had, considering Germany offers Jews that right. . If that’s not good enough for the Israelis, the alternate solution is for the world to enforce full citizenship in a single state with equal rights for all before its law on paper and in practice.
That’s basic
The law against theft comes from Moses! The most famous Jew of all time! It’s not the default human condition: victoribus spolia is. I question eee’s semitism.
eee,
The decision was not just inefficient. There was deception involved. Go though the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz for the past several years, and there are constant articles expecting the Iron Dome to come along by 2010. It was like Waiting for Godot. Now the Iron Dome is here and there is no defense for Sderot. Also, the Qassams have not stopped in spite of Operation Cast Lead. This was total deception, the using of people. Yossi Melman speaks strongly because he has been following it for years.
Robert,
Deception is in the eye of the beholder. When the US instructed its citizens to duck under tables in case of a nuclear attack, was it deceiving them or trying to reassure them? From the get go, it was clear that shooting expensive missiles at inexpensive ones is a fool’s errand and many Israelis understood that. During war, it is much cheaper to move the population inside shelters.
The best defense for Sderot is deterrence and that was obtained in spades from Cast Led. No, the rockets have not stopped completely but how can you compare the situation? Life in Sderot is almost normal now.
As for the Vulcans, they would have been a mistake even if effective. Israel citizens should not be expected to live under constant missile threat just because Israel has defense systems or can develop them. Long term, only deterrence makes sense and that was achieved by Cast Lead. And if the missiles start again, there will be another Cast Lead.
No, actually. Deception is all about blatant falsehood.
“Life in Sderot is almost normal now.” And how is life in Najd, eee?
eee,
Deception is in the eye of constant Ministry of Defense statements, news reports, press releases for the past 3 years.
But the back-and-forth over many years leads one to stand back and ask “who are these people”,the Gazans and the Hamas? The Gazans are refugees from Beersheva and the Negev in general, as well as the former Majdal al-Asqalan, now Ashkelon. They are firing rockets because they are fighting for the Palestinian cause. They will never stop, no matter how many Cast Leads, because they are trying to be a nation. The US realized that the North Vietnamese would never stop, because they were trying to unify their nation. Israel, especially American Jews need to understand that the Palestinians will never stop, because they are trying to be a nation.
Robert,
I do not think we disagree on that the Palestinians will sometimes use violence to achieve their goals and that in the future they may continue to do so. They and you have to understand that we will not accept anything less than a Jewish state in the middle east and are willing to fight for it as we have been doing for the last 62 years. Every few years the violence will escalate and then there will be a Cast Lead until a historical compromise is reached. The missiles are fired at Israeli Jews so it is really much more of a problem for us than for American Jews. Israelis will suffer the consequences of how we deal with Gaza and most of us believe we are dealing with Gaza just fine.
Do you even know where Najd used to be, eee? Hypocrite. I want my taxpayers’ money back too, you fraud.
“we will not accept anything less than a Jewish state in the middle east and are willing to fight for it as we have been doing for the last 62 years. Every few years the violence will escalate and then there will be a Cast Lead until a historical compromise is reached. ”
You do not mean “compromise ” when you say “we will not accept anything less”. You mean “submission”.
You want it, so you will kill people to keep it, regardless of whether it is necessary, legal, or moral.
You will do this because what you want is far more important than what anyone else wants or needs.
What you want is far more important than what is right or decent.
You want the Palestinians to submit to your demands, because you believe that you are much more important than anyone else.
And that belief puts you outside the moral realm.
“”And that belief puts you outside the moral realm.”
Maybe, but it’ll never get him excommunicated from the Mondoweiss comment section.
Remind me to make a big contribution. There’s just nowhere else I can hear viewpoints like Witty’s and “eee”s.
Did Phil really think the comment section would be a place where Zionists, when faced with facts, and thier own murderous amorality, would then change their minds? If that much hope sprang eternal in my breast, I’d be Playmate of the Year!
That’s a strange way of looking at it. Hamas are firing rockets because Gaza is under siege and because Israel continues to use violence to impose its policies of oppression. The “Palestinian cause” — whatever the author believes it is — does not exist in a vacuum.
When a person uses such terminology, it is usually indicative of a superficial understanding of the conflict.
not all the people who read this site comment
Long term, only deterrence makes sense and that was achieved by Cast Lead. And if the missiles start again, there will be another Cast Lead.
what are you talking about eee. do you believe all the lies they tell you. there was a ceasefire prior to cast lead and it worked very well. the rockets coming out of gaza now, few as they are , are more than what proceeded cast lead. israel knows it initiates violence all the time in gaza. violence isn’t israel’s response, it has always been standard operation procedure, it’s modus operandi d’jour for keeping it’s ‘democracy’ intact, it’s creeping demographic threat under the boot.
You know that’s pure BS eee.
Israeli leaders are already talking about the next war with Gaza. They’re just formulating a plan to make Hamas guilty of starting it.
Ethan Bronner admitted that Cast Lead was largely motivated by a desire to re-establish Israel’s deterrence capacity, which they apparently lost in 2006 to Hezbollah.
Avi,
Hamas has fired rockets since 2001, before the siege. Regarding “the Palestinian cause” in the same post, I said that “Palestinians are trying to become a nation”. What could be more explicit than that?
When the US government instructed its citizens to duck under tables (or elementary school pupil desks) in case of a nuclear attack, it was BOTH deceiving them AND trying to reassure them. A child’s desk is not protection against a nuclear bomb, and there is no guardian angel.
Nazis also found very disproportionate reaction to puny local resistence a very effective deterrent as they occupied ever more land on the way to Russia. That was the SS troopers’ specialty, although many Wermacht troopers were shocked by it; but they were only following orders.
Eee, you aren’t fighting for your Jewish state, your “we” has been consistently and brutally collectively punishing the Palestinian people for decades, using pretext after pretext resulting from your goading in the first place. Before Israel broke the 6-month ceasefire in November, during the six months of the cease-fire itself, [agreed on between Israel and Hamas in June 2008], there were 153 violations of the cease-fire by Israel, and 36 Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israeli forces. Most important of all, the economic siege of Gaza continued. Many a Wehrmacht soldier thought he was fighting to protect his country t00, beginning when he stepped foot into Poland. The world won’t forget you either.
Those guns kick an awful lot of hot metal into the air.
When following an incoming rocket, that metal will land *all* over the place.
I would not be surprised if the conclusion was that more damage (to Israel, who cares about Gaza) would inevitably be done by the defense system than a few crude rockets would. Furthermore, the IDF would get the blame for any damage caused, rather than being able to blame Hamas.
Ael,
The ammunition for the Vulcan-Phalanx destructs itself in the air, so that it will cause no damage or limited damage to the population below.
Oh, like Agent Orange?
The self destruct mostly destroys the aerodynamics of the round.
The pellet is nowhere near powereful enough to vaporize the round.
There is still a lot of hot shrapnel in the air.
With a burnout of 5 seconds and a velocity of a bit more than 1 km per second, you will still get a lot of crap falling within 5 km of the intercept point.
With a 3 oz projectile and, say, 1000 rounds kicked into the air (per gun (15-20 seconds of firing), that is about 85 kilos of metal. 5 guns make about 400 kilos. Someone is *bound* to get hurt.
It would be far more dangerous than a single sugar-fueled rocket.
Anyone know what the trajectory of a Kassam is? Is it relatively flat, or high angle?
Anyone know what the trajectory of a Kassam is? Is it relatively flat, or high angle?
Ael ~ anecdotally, photos I’ve seen of Qassam rocket launchers (really not much more than a tripod) have them pointing not far off vertical. I know nothing about ballistics but perhaps they’re high-angle?
Never underestimate the ability of the Israeli mind to lay the blame on Hamas.
“Where was the much-vaunted Israeli ingenuity?”
It’s a PR construct. If Israelis had any ingenuity they wouldn’t be bankrolling YESHA or spending money on white phosphorous and not on fire trucks.
The people who live in Sderot are Mizrahi losers who don’t count to Ashkenazi Israel.
Sderot is entirely too convenient to the Israeli military establishment as an excuse to attack Gaza. If they really cared for the safety of Sderot, they would have accepted the Hamas offer of a ceasefire.
Yessir, and it was more than just an offer – Hamas demonstrated that they could control and end the rockets at will, with no casualties on either side in August, September and October, and rockets & mortars in decreasing single digits in every of those months:
link to en.wikipedia.org
Latest from wikileaks, this 2007 cable from Tel Aviv Embassy, documentin glee in Israel at the prospect of Hamas controlling Gaza (cable ref: 07TELAVIV1733)[my emphasis]:
The Ambassador commented that if Fatah decided it has
lost Gaza, there would be calls for Abbas to set up a
separate regime in the West Bank. While not necessarily
reflecting a consensus GOI view, Yadlin commented that such a
development would please Israel since it would enable the IDF
to treat Gaza as a hostile country rather than having to deal
with Hamas as a non-state actor. He added that Israel could
work with a Fatah regime in the West Bank. The Ambassador
asked Yadlin if he worried about a Hamas-controlled Gaza
giving Iran a new opening. Yadlin replied that Iran was
already present in Gaza, but Israel could handle the
situation “as long as Gaza does not have a port (sea or air).
…
Comment: Yadlin’s relatively relaxed attitude toward
the deteriorating security situation in Gaza represents a
shift in IDF thinking from last fall, when the Southern
Command supported a major ground operation into Gaza to
remove the growing threat from Hamas. While many media
commentators continue to make that argument, Yadlin’s view
appears to be more in synch with that of Chief of General
Staff Ashkenazi, who also believes that the more serious
threat to Israel currently comes from the north.
Yadlin is not only unphased, he actually seems to want Hamas in power. The citizens of Sderot simply don’t matter.
- – - – -
From the same release of cables two days ago, Sarkozy’s very frank assessment of the situation in Palestine and Israel to be delivered to Netanyahu, from June 2009 (cable ref: 09PARIS827):
Paoli explained that President Sarkozy will have
three messages to convey to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu
when they meet in Paris on June 24:
– “You think you’ve got time, but you don’t.”
– “You think you have an alternative solution, but you
don’t.”
– “You think you’re stronger than the Palestinians, but
you’re not.”
Paoli said that Sarkozy will stress that “there is a single
door and it is imperative to move through it now.”
Just like my FM Kevin Rudd at the Manama Dialogue earlier this month, Sark is urging Israel to act now before all prospects of a two-state evaporate, forever.
Excellent post Sumud,
That puts the nail on the coffin once and for all, to the argument that the 2008 Gaza war had anything to do with Israel’s self defense.
I will keep that link and use it from now on, every time Witty brings up his usual garbage.
No probs Shingo, WL is a gift that keeps giving. I suspect that cable and the Vanity Fair article on the US/Israel sponsored Fateh coup is the closest we’ll probably get to confirmation that Israel’s primary goal has been ‘divide and conquer’ WRT Gaza and the West Bank/East Jerusalem. Israel sponsored the coup, knowing Hamas would win in Gaza. To speculate, it’s conceivable they even tipped Hamas off about Fateh’s impending coup. Both parties have been played – perhaps this will speed their reconciliation. A new round of National elections would be a good thing in the next year.
- – - – -
While I’m no fan of Sarkozy, if I were Palestinian I think I’d be feeling intensely proud at his assessment, especially point #3. However hopeless things might seem at times, much suffering and hard work is not in vain. Might is not right.
On that note, anyone heard any more about the Pakistani man suing (or talking about suing) the CIA for $500 million over the killing of his family members by US drone attacks? Brief headlines on Democracy Now a few weeks ago but nothing much since that I’ve seen. This articel at The Times of India goes into more detail.
here’s an update about Jonathan Banks, the cia guy that’s supposed to be hush hush. The CIA And U.S. Media (Self-)Censorship
and don’t forget to follow the first link, which leads to background/speculation. moa rocks.
Why? The Israeli political establishment is territorially expansionist, solidly across what passes these days for an Israeli political spectrum. The acquisition of land by military conquest has been viewed with strong disapproval since the end of the Second World War and every dead Israeli civilian allows victimhood-steeped breast-beating to distract from Israeli ethnic cleansing and colonization.
We should recall that Palestinians are not Israel’s only victims. Israel has attempted to steal land from the Lebanese, Syrians, and Egyptians and still occupies the Golan Heights and Shebaa Farms. Egypt recovered the Sinai, conquered and colonized by Israel in 1967, by counter-attacking Israel in 1973. While Egypt eventually lost on the battlefield, the enormous damage they did to Israel in lives and heavy equipment in my opinion psychologically pre-conditioned the Israeli political establishment to eventually accept Pres. Carter’s peace plan under which Israeli colonies were withdrawn from the Sinai and Egypt resumed its rightful sovereignty … in return for staggering annual bribes to both Egypt and Israel underwritten by American taxpayers. The desirability of re-opening the Suez Canal for commercial traffic probably played a major role.
As long as Israel continues to covet the land of its neighbors, it will never be at peace. It’s long past time for a just final-status agreement with FIXED borders.
Territorially expansionist? Then how come there are no Jews living in Gaza today?
I seem to remember that the Gaza assault was a failed mission of population transfer through terror.
Because they were moved, in net effect, to Palestinian land in the West Bank in record numbers. And there are not “no Jews” living in Gaza today. There are European and American volunteers and UN personnel, several of whom are Jewish.
What there are, are NO ISRAELIS in Gaza. Stop lying. You may be able to zip crap like that through moderation and maybe Phil and Adam don’t give two sh!ts, but most of the rest of the blog’s regulars aren’t dupes.
“There are European and American volunteers and UN personnel, several of whom are Jewish.”
Please.
Volunteers don’t live there, and there are virtually no Jews there. Your argument is not remotely convincing. The argument was made that Israel is expansionist. Gaza flies in the face of all that.
Oh, so now there are VIRTUALLY NO JEWS there? Let the vacillation begin. Name a year in which the Israeli population outside of the 1967 borders actually decreased over the course of that year. Provide citations.
I already know you can’t. There isn’t a year from 1967 onward that Israel hasn’t been transferring more population outside of its international borders than not.
False argument Hophmi.
Where does it say that Israel has to expand into Gaza to be be expansionist? It is clearly expanding into the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Try logic next time. Talking points aren’t helping.
Hophmi, hophmi, hophmi. :) How does “Gaza fly in the face of [Israel being expansionist]?” First let’s recall that something like half of Gazans are refugees or descendants of refugees from parts of Palestine that Israelis ethnically cleansed before 1967. Then the IDF rolled in and ethnically cleansed Palestinians off 40% off the Gaza strip, of course including the best arable land. If driving into a new place with tanks and machine-guns, herding people off their land like animals and then planting permanent racial colonies on the ground-swept-clean with the intent to eventually annex isn’t territorially expansionist, then nothing is.
The Israeli political establishment tried and failed to steal both Gaza and Egypt. The point you are missing is that failure at armed robbery doesn’t mean that the robbery attempt never happened and that one is not a robber, it just means that one is a less than perfectly successful robber. Don’t feel too disappointed: Israel is still in possession of both Syrian and Lebanese land which its political establishment has zero interest in ever returning. A partially successful territorial expansionist is still a thief.
I’ll tell the babies in Judea and Samaria to apologize for being born.
As I said, Israel pulled its people out of Gaza, just as it pulled its people out of Sinai before that. That flies in the face of the thesis that Israel is expansionist.
Sure.
Israel plans to eventually force Gaza onto Egypt, but is attempting to keep the territorial waters surrounding it.
Doesn’t want the Gaza ‘headache’ anymore, just the resources.
link to mondoweiss.net
There, doesn’t fly in the face of anything now. Just falls flat. Smack!
No because there is still a nett expasion. You don’t just count the outgoings without counting the incommings Hophmi.
>> If driving into a new place with tanks and machine-guns, herding people off their land like animals and then planting permanent racial colonies on the ground-swept-clean with the intent to eventually annex isn’t territorially expansionist, then nothing is.
According to the Zio-supremacism cultists, this process of ethnic cleansing and colonization is known as “a migration”.
It’s all part of creating a previously non-existent “tiny blue dot in a sea of green” – “a good in the world”, if you will – which must then be defended from falling into egalitarianism and democracy by means of further and ON-GOING aggression, oppression, land theft, colonization, destruction and murder.
Said activities cause Islamofacistpalestinianarabterrorists to hate Israel for its freedoms, thereby justifying Zio-supremacist fears which can only be quelled by pumping raw sewage onto Palestinian farmland, burning Palestinian sheep and “Remember[ing] the Holocaust!”
“I’ll tell the babies in Judea and Samaria to apologize for being born. ”
It’s easy to tell you’re callously self-centered and don’t give a damn about Israel’s effect on people it doesn’t consider Jewish.
Since the war, Israel control a no go zone of 300m inside the boundary. That constitutes about 10% of Gaza.
Mission accomplished.
Here is a relevant article by the distinguished Uri Avnery: Ship of Fools 2
From Avnery’s article:
“Dayan, then the idol of Israel and an international sex symbol, declared: “If I have to choose between Sharm al-Sheikh without peace or peace without Sharm al-Sheikh, I choose Sharm al-Sheikh.”
In retrospect, that sounds like sheer madness.”
One of the 26 European elder statesmen who signed the letter pressing for a change in European policy towards Israel is former German chancellor Schmidt. Excerpt from his conversation with Fritz Stern on the ‘madness’ of settling the WB:
schmidt: In the seventies, our [the German government's] relationship with Israel grew more difficult, although there were exceptions; with Moshe Dayan, for instance, the hero of the Six Day War, I was on the best terms.
stern: Overall, I would say that the Israelis themselves were less critical towards the Germans than the American Jews were. Not all of them, but many, especially the right-wing American Jews, had an enormous resentment. And they still have it.
schmidt: Yes, and without the American Jews the settlements on the West Bank would never have come about the way they did.
stern: Without part of the American Jews.
schmidt: That is, however, not my personal experience. A friend explained this to me a few years ago, in the course of a discussion about the settlements on the West Bank. You just have to look, he said, they’re all young people who were born and brought up in the Bronx.
stern: That’s probably a great exaggeration. Certainly there are some who went over and became settlers on the West Bank, but it is more likely a somewhat smaller number.
schmidt: No matter how many, Fritz, the fact is that Israel could never have pursued such an offensive policy in the Middle East without the complete cover that America provided in the last thirty years.
stern: We spoke about this at length yesterday.
schmidt: What can the Israelis do? They have gotten themselves on the wrong track, and in the process they’ve created one of the few possibly insoluable problems in the world today.
stern: This is a great tragedy. I am very concerned about the future of Israel when I think about its own policies.
schmidt: For more than forty years the world has known that a solution is only possible on the basis of two states. Since 1968, this recognition has been shared by all governments of the world, more or less, with the sole exception of Israel. In the meantime a half million Israelis live on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.
stern: Yes, and the conditions on the West Bank are deplorable, I mean how the Arabs are treated.
schmidt: The so-called wall, which runs for many kilometers around each settlement without taking the Arab population into consideration, stands outside of the official territory of the state of Israel.
stern: And it’s neither justifiable under international law nor humane. There have of course been efforts to come to a two-state solution. I took Yitzhak Rabin seriously, his efforts amounted to a proper approach. Then he was killed by a fanatic. And aside from him there were then and there are today important Israeli politicians, organizations, and individuals who are engaged for peace and a reasonable solution. The Israel of the hardliners is not the entire country.
schmidt: In the Oslo process Rabin set course for the two-state solution. The fate of the settlements was, however, set aside for the moment.
stern: I believe that Rabin hoped that compromises could be made. His model would have been: we will give up some settlements, and in exchange for those that we’re keeping, we’ll give you, the Arabs, some more land elsewhere. There were and are still today some organizations in Israel that are absolutely committed to the return of this land. I knew an Israeli general by the name of Tal. General Tal was called the Israeli Rommel because he was a major tank commander—in 1967 and even more significantly in 1973 in the Yom Kippur War. It was he who pressed to the banks of the Suez Canal and who then signed the cease-fire agreement on the Nile. Three years later I visited him. He showed me pictures of the ceasefire: he was standing on his tank, surrounded by other tanks. And then he suddenly said: “We won a great victory, but I have to say this: We have to give it all back.”
schmidt: Some day, sooner or later, or–
stern: Indeed, not today. But also not in some uncertain distant future. “We have to give it all back.” And then he said–the discussion occurred in the Ministry of Defense–”Here in this house I am an exception.”
schmidt: Later I suspect Moshe Dayan was of a similar opinion.
stern: And later he said, and it made quite an impression on me: “You should know that I belong to the hawks here; the second we come under attack, I will be just as hardline as the others.”
schmidt: Let’s depart the subject of Israel, Fritz. Nothing positive comes of it.
link to harpers.org
>> The non-defense of Sderot also strongly suggests that the leadership felt that attacks on Sderot were more advantageous as a source of sympathy for Israel than was the imperative to defend the citizens.
Yup, it very strongly suggests that. Then again, perhaps the residents of Sderot have offered to take a hit for the good of “the collective”. Every little bit of victimhood PR helps.
The residents of Sderot were not volunteers, they were drafted. Sderot was founded as a “development town” where less-desirable Jewish immigrants could be sent to squat on the land so the expelled population couldn’t return to claim it. They were cannon fodder then, they are cannon fodder still.
And yet, civilians are a critical part of the Israeli strategy. Much of the heavy lifting of the Occupation in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Golan, and previously in Gaza and Sinai was done by civilians. Using civilians to hold dangerous or contested ground has been a strategy of the Israeli government since its birth.
Isn’t there a word for that sort of tactic? Oh yes. “Human shields.”
A very incisive comment, and with the gift of brevity. Stay around.
No promises. I’m dangerously close to saying “screw it” again. Like Shingo said, these sadistic clowns get to repeat the same lies over and over and over again.
Yes, and we get to rebut those same lies over and over and over again. As irritating as that is, it’s educational for newcomers and regulars – and it helps expands our community at a grassroots level. AIPAC has 100,000 members. Mondoweiss has grown to ~750,000 unique visitors in a quarter.
I don’t know if you saw these comments of Phil’s from a few weeks ago about RW and moderation in general:
link to mondoweiss.net
…but relevant to this discussion is Phil’s statement about how repetitious blogging can be, and how useless MW would be if every hasbara-bot was bounced.
- – - – -
Otherwise, hiya Chaos. Glad to see your handle again – hope your studies are going well..
This post is very revealing of the territory of fantasy that Israel occupies in the minds of so many Zionists.
Is the whole idea of Iron Dome a fantasy?
Boondoggle, actually, to be precise. Millions of dollars of America’s “finest,” poured into a project of foreign soil that couldn’t defeat a flock of errant geese.
Yes. Part of what is going on is that the Iron Dome is pretty much fantasy. One of the reasons for the delays is that if it ever gets deployed, it either has to work, or be an absolute disaster. It’s much more useful as a future threat and an untested proof of that “much-vaunted Israeli ingenuity” which Robert discusses. Having a magical, technical solution (security without the need for peace) just over the horizon is critical to making the status quo feel stable to the population.
It’s all fantasy.
To this day, the US has failed to conduct a successful test of it’s missile shield, and that is under circumstances which are entirely rigged to produce a positive outcome.
Even if a shield that works can easily be defeated by multiple simultaneous attacks.
While I tend to agree with Richard Witty, that much of this came down to a cost-benefit analysis, your underlying points are accurate:
1) Israel uses the “protection of civilians” (and the larger “self-defense”) motif to bilk US taxpayers to subsidize their arms export business. This is simple and staightfoward.
2) Civilian casualties honestly aren’t that important to the Israeli government. For the government, civilian casualties (unless they are in extreme numbers) do not damage state power. Additionally, being able to claim that civilians are under attack gives great PR (and financial) rewards. What Israel cares about is military dominance. Hence, for all the talk attacks on Sderot, Israel saves money by not deploying an expensive (and marginally effective) missile system. But when Hamas knocks out an Israeli tank in Gaza as they did 2 weeks ago, Israel suddenly deploys “super-armored” tanks to the border.
I agree BillM,
Especially with regard to point 2. That’s why Israel had a collective crisis after the 2006 war – because Hezbollah beat them by sheer ingenuity, discipline, efficiency, determination and even technology – all of which Israel has convinced itself was unrivaled.
I think Hizbullah’s impressive electronic warfare performance in 2006, almost certainly courtesy of Iran, particularly sticks in the collective IDF craw.
Bill M, do you have the tmerity to suggest that “the Jews” aren’t “one collective”. Are you suggesting that some Jews are more equal than others?
You don’t want to get started in that direction, Bill. Next you might end up considering the possibility that the Israeli leadership would sacrifice a lot of Jews for their own clean get-a-way.
Remember Bill, those aren’t just a bunch of people in Israel who happen to be Jewish, no, those are “the Jews”, “one collective”!
I expect I’m back for a limited time only. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Good to have you back Chaos.
Rest assured, Witty has been consigned to irrelevance. Few even bother to acknowledge his posts these days.
Then why is the first half of this thread wasted on his drivel – occupying as usual the first post.
Good question Potsherd2.
I can;t for the life of me understand why Phil allows Witty to repeat his blatant lies about this topic, after Witty has been corrected and refuted countless times.
What the hell can you do? Let him consistently post lies, and not reply with facts? (Which, I hasten to ad, you guys do so well)
Please stay chaos – cheered me up to see your name back up again.
Clearly, “follow[ing] Israel issues” isn’t sufficient enough a qualification to know all the facts about the Israeli-Palestinian impasse.
Robert wrote:
That is factually not true. It is false. The need for a so-called offensive solution could have been mitigated by adhering to ceasefire agreements to which both Hamas and Israel agreed in the summer of 2008 and several times before that. Hamas did adhere to ceasefire agreements, but Israel violated them, time and again.
Apparently, the author followed it very superficially.
This is absolutely false. Utter garbage. It is a flat out lie and it’s anyone’s guess why Phil and Adam allowed such lies to be posted. Israel’s assault on Gaza came in December 2008, after Israel refused to extend the ceasefire agreement, and after it had refused to adhere to the ceasefire terms.
False, again. This is absolute garbage.
Hearing criticism isn’t sufficient. The author needs to do more research.
Again, this is false. The four Israeli soldiers who were killed were killed in friendly-fire incidents. Anyone who “follows” recent events would know that. Perhaps Robert needs to follow closer, or better yet, stick to honeymooning.
Don’t Mondoweiss owners fact-check articles before they publish them?
Evidently not.
Absolute garbage Robert. You really need to research your topic before going out on a limb and making a fool of yourself.
Hamas didn’t just “choose” to to fire missiles at Israel. It did so in response to a raid that Israel conducted on November 4th 2008, which was a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement. Israel killed 6 Palestinians in the process.
If you could pull your Israeli centric mind out of the sand for long enough, you’d accept that had Hamas conducted the raid on Israel (during the ceasefire), that Israel would have responded with overwhelming force and uniformed cheers leaders like yourself would have declared it a justified response.
Evidently, only Israel is entitled to self defense in your mind.
It’s a sad day when such a poorly informed contributor is able to disseminate such a shoddy piece on Mondoweiss.
Perspective, Shingo, perspective. The perspective from which I was saying this was (past tense) where my understanding was in 2008. As I mentioned. Since then I have learned many new things in 2010. As I mentioned.
That might be the case Robert, but your responses indicate that you are still arguing this entire thesis from the Israeli perspective.
I don’t want to seem harsh, but your concern has been exclusively for the 28 victims of rocket attacks over a period of years, while not bothering to address the November 4th violation by Israel, or the 1,400 Palestinian victims.
If you want credit for trying, then you’ve picked the wrong audience.
Mark Perry, co-director of the Conflicts Forum, a British-American group which mediates between the West and Islamist groups, including Hamas, stated on PBS’s “Newshour” (1/5/09) that contrary to US-Israeli propaganda, “During the six months of the cease-fire [agreed on between Israel and Hamas in June 2008], there were 153 violations of the cease-fire by Israel, and 36 Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israeli forces. Most important of all, the economic siege of Gaza continued.”
Gee whiz, Avi. The post is about defense of Sderot, but it’s also about by journey of understanding about Gaza from a rah-rah pro-Israel one, which I admitted, to a deeper one. My history and instincts have been pro-Israel. That’s why getting someone like me to understand Palestine and the Palestinians better is a transformation, of sorts. It looks like we are ending up in a place of “violent agreement”. Regarding the Israeli soldiers killed, I was quoting Norman Finkelstein. After rechecking in on Wikipedia, I see that you are correct, my apologies. 4 soldiers were killed by friendly fire, and 6 by enemy forces for a total of 10. The story about approval of Vulcan-Phalanx for this application is well documented. Please see this earlier article by Yossi Melman: link to haaretz.com .
That’s great, and all, but while we’re busy correcting the mistakes in your homework so you can go back and revise your thesis, how many Palestinians have died? How many Gazans went without dinner just this evening of this exchange, let alone had nothing but a bomb crater to visit where there should have been a school to attend?
Those of us on the blog spend like 80% of our time correcting errors like this, whether they are deliberately malicious fabrications, or honest mistakes, like yours. Are you expecting sympathy? Too bad. We’re still mourning the dead that are still piling up. Wait your turn.
Changing the Israeli dead count from 4 to 6 doesn’t change the thesis one iota. Given the imperfection of all cease-fire (they were never 100%, including now), the need for defense still stands. If the situation heats up in the future, the need is still there.
…So you have the same Witty-shaped hole regarding November 8th, 2008? Gee, I’m positively shocked.
Yes, Gaza’s need for defense is dire and urgent. The situation is heated now, Gazans are dying now. Who will protect Gaza from Israeli aggression?
Jesus dude, at least get your talking points right, the old Chaos repeated November 4th at least 1000 times, how can you get the date wrong?
if israel wanted some kind of defensive shield to protect itself from those little rockets it would have had one by now. israel didn’t need any rockets to pulverize gaza last time, obviously the ceasefire was working. and it won’t need any rockets next time, it will pulverize gaza whenever it suits itself just like last time it revved up the crowds for election season.
those little rockets provide a pretext to starve and humiliate gazans, so why would israel want to loose that option? makes no logical sense.
the need for defense still stands. If the situation heats up in the future, the need is still there.
okay i’m game, why do you think israel has no protective shield for these generally ineffective homemade rockets?
Annie,
You are agreeing with me. The point of the post is that Israel wants the pretext that you are talking about. And that is regrettable for all civilians, Israeli and Palestinian.
Annie,
Israel has no protective shield for these rockets because they want to maintain the sympathy that derives from the victimization of Sderot residents. The Ministry of Defense and Rafael used the situation as a pretext for developing Iron Dome for other purposes, such as selling to Singapore. This is the link regarding that. link to haaretz.com
Yes they do, and as Moshe Dayan explained with the tactics they used against Syrian, Israel will push and push until they get the pretext they want.
Robert, the Israelis broke the ceasefire November 4, ’08, and during the 6 mo ceasefire itself Israel executed 153 violations of the cease-fire, and the IDF killed 36 Palestinians in Gaza. Not to mention the economic siege of Gaza never stopped at all. How do those facts fit your thesis?
thank you robert.
How many Gazans did go without dinner Chaos, please answer us, in your absence, the Gaza talking points have went from limited imports to the inability to export. Have you been in a propaganda bubble the last 3 months?
How many North Dakotan gold ol’ boys does it take to starve a Gazan family? How many college friends left for the IDF, again, yonira? Refresh our memory.
Not to mention, yonira, some Israelis have actually had to use a few drops less water in their swimming pools. But that’s just temporary–the international civil rights folks have been smearing Israel lately with lies about how Israel is robbing the natives of their water for their little vegetable and fruit gardens, which are billed as “crucial to helping the Palestinians survive.”
Chaos, 2 of my friends made Aliyah and were required to join the IDF. Surprising you forgot this though, I believe your censorship on Mondoweiss started right around the time you told me that you hoped they get killed by Palestinian terrorists.
None of what you wrote about your own personal transformation has any bearing on the fact that Israel violated the ceasefire.
Additionally, writing about the so-called missile shield does not preclude one from using factual information on the conflict.
And finally, I suggest you read the following article, entitled The Gaza Bombshell and watch this Democracy Now interview with professor Avi Shlaim to understand the fallacious framing in regard to the morality or immorality of one attack or another.
“And I, for my part, have never questioned the legitimacy of the Zionist movement. I saw it as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. Nor did I ever question the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I reject, what I reject totally, absolutely and uncompromisingly, is the Zionist colonial project beyond the 1967 borders. So we have to distinguish very clearly between Israel proper, within its pre-1967 borders, and Greater Israel, which began to emerge in the aftermath of the June ’67 war and has completely derailed the Zionist project.”
What’s interesting about Avi Shlaim, RW, is that though he’s a Zionist, he doesn’t lie about the crimes committed in its name. I think there’s a contradiction in his thinking, but I admire his honesty, which is much greater than yours. It’s interesting that you only quote the part of Shlaim’s piece which pleases you and you ignore the parts where he contradicts your own claims about what led to the Gaza War. Why can’t you be more like Prof. Shlaim, Richard?
I am like professor Shlaim, in that I express honestly what I conclude from the facts that I’ve encountered (most of what you’ve also encountered, not an exact match) and from the interpretations of what I consider relevant to decision processes in real time.
Professor Shlaim’s and my views on proposals and recommended strategies for Israeli administrations are close.
Our reactions to different events are also close, but less so.
I know you read my blog post on my independant observation of what led to the Gaza war and aftermath, so I think you are stretching, projecting about my views here.
What do you knwo about facts Witty? You’ve demonstrated time and time again that you are impervious to them and have no idea about facts.
This is why you are incapable of supporting your narrative with any evidence. When challenged, you revert to “your truths” and opinions and interpretations and sentiment (all of which you make up on the spot).
Your views are lies. That’s the only way to describe them.
Witty, you are insulting the regulars here who have seen you time after time disregard all the documentation provided you here by responses to your comments that contradict what you’ve nevertheless repeatedly stated here as fact.
I’d flag Witty’s entry as ad hominem against Professor Shlaim for that comparison, but who would listen?
on the front page of the gaza bombshell article is a link to documents which is essential i/p 101 material. the pdf files were left over from the state department. they provide ample evidence of US goals and intentions including the positioning of fayyed.
The need for defense still continues even with the cease-fire.
Can you express that in a quantitative value? Like, say, number of Palestinian children killed per month? The benchmark set by Operation Cast Lead is around a hundred, give or take, apparently. We would like to know if that number has changed.
Why is it that pro Israeli advocates use this as an excuse to post blatant lies?
The claim of self defense no longer applies when you break it. Israel deliberately chose to violate the ceasefire on the day of the US presidential elections. They did so with the full acceptance that this would put Israelis in Sderot in danger.
“The need for defense still continues even with the cease-fire.”
Here we go. Honeymoon’s over, Robert.
Robert, if Israel really cared about ensuring the safety of the Sderot residents, it would evacuate them, move them out of danger. The fact that it doesn’t means two things -
First, that the danger to Sderot from Gaza is minimal. The danger is more a propaganda point than real.
Second, that Israel would rather expose the residents to this minimal danger than lose the propaganda point by ensuring their safety, moving them out of range.
The danger to Gazans, otoh, is deadly and ongoing. But the Gazans can’t evacuate, no more than the fish can evacuate the barrel.
I suggest you concentrate on the need for defense in Gaza and how their safety can be assured in light of the murderous force with which they are surrounded.
What exactly are you selling?
This alleged missile “defense” system is merely a response to a symptom, and it’s a perceived symptom at that. Should the disease be treated, instead of the symptom, such technology — however successful or ineffective — would be unnecessary.
So, as you can see, the premise of your argument is false.
Chaos,
The need for *missile defense* of Sderot continues even with the cease-fire. “Defense” did not refer to Operation Cast Lead.
Avi,
Yes, it is in response to a symptom. The cause is the lack of an agreement, as I responded to eee above. However, that symptom caused 28 deaths and hundreds of injuries over nine years. And that is also regrettable. Do you rejoice in the deaths of the Sderot Israelis? I don’t. Also, the pressure that is existing and coming in the future is founded on non-violent tactics. Violent deaths of Israelis plays into the hands of Israel. And that is the point of the article, that the lack of defense of Sderot is a result of the advantage Israel gains from the sympathy garnered by the deaths of those Israelis. The safety of Sderot residents doesn’t come into it. And that’s very regrettable.
Please see below about “defense”.
Apparently this guy doesn’t get the fact that if Israel lifted the siege, ended the 43-year long occupation and justly settled the 63-year-long conflict, there would be no need for a “defensive” shield near Sderot.
Don’t expect me to take you seriously after posing such an accusatory disgusting question.
How revealing that the 1,400 deaths in Gaza don’t even rate a mention. Could it be that you rejoice in the deaths of the Gaza Palestinians Robert?
Whereas the violent deaths of 500 times as many Palestinians doesn’t even rate a mention.
Israel has no advantage left on it’s ledger Robert. That’s changes nothing, because Israel has nothing to lose by acting like a rogue, war obsessed state.
But by all means, blame the Palestinians for not dying silently and losing sympathy as they try salvage some dignity and fight back.
If there ever was an example of how Zionism corrupts any semblance of justice, you’ve just illustrated it.
I think I understand your point–whoever is to blame for the lack of an agreement (hint–Israel), until there is peace the citizens of Sderot should be protected from rockets and not by bombing Gaza, but with some sort of missile shield. That’s reasonable. And you’re right that the deaths of Israeli civilians plays into the hands of the Israeli warmongers and expansionists.
I think people are reacting because you didn’t make it clear the difference between what you used to believe and what you believe now. I’m not entirely clear on that myself, but maybe that’s because I’m falling asleep as I type.
robert, have you ever checked out one of seham’s (daily)threads, or one of kate’s? do you think murdered gazan’s is a rare occurrence post the CL massacre? did you hear about the 80 year old ‘militant’ farmer and his 18yr old grandson who some iof teenager w/a machine gun just blew away one morning. maybe the ol man was holding a rake and leaned over. they kill people all the time there for no reason, and then call them ‘militants’. children even. this is from yesterday
i call that target practice.
israel might want to invest in being nice, that’s the most effective cheap form of defense around. just saying. of course it wouldn’t protect israel from the ‘demographic threat’, only death or transfer works for that kind of threat.
allegedly about to fire rockets, according to israel. and if they weren’t? i have no idea. the chances those rockets would have hurt somebody? zilch. bottom line, where would those young pilots get target practice if there was a protective shield? can you imagine living next door to trigger happy teens w/machine guns and towers aimed at your town w/a massive military supporting them? and you’re concerned w/israel’s defense?
look on the bright side. all those residence in serdot? they can move, gazans don’t have that option. if a war breaks out they can get in their car and drive away, they don’t need permission to evacuate to egypt. there are no walls holding them back.
I can’t tell if my attempts at editing worked, but anyway, let me add that of course the best defense is what annie suggests below (or above or somewhere in this thread). Treat the Palestinians with fairness and decency and justice and that will do more for security than even the best missile shield.
“Instincts” is merely a euphemism for I admire these east Europeans who built for themselves a state, a modern western state. Those primitive Ay-rabs, however, well….I feel no kinship toward them and have no admiration for them.
And the Israelis are supposed to need missile defense more than the Palestinians? So that, what, Gaza can become a complete fish in a barrel shoot?
Avi,
Everyone’s perspective comes from somewhere, and mine is moving in the direction of the Palestinians. You don’t need more of the same people who have always agreed with you, you need people moving in your direction from the other side. Also, I did this for the right reasons, by reading the internet and realizing things that I hadnt known before. The perspective that I’m getting from these responses is a total lack of concern for the Israelis of Sderot. That’s a shame. All civilian deaths are tragic, and that also points out the need for non-violent, vigorous, aggressive, media-savvy protest.
Donald,
Agreed. It is still a good idea to do both.
Good observation, Shingo! So now we know the quantitative metric that Rob uses for “self defense.” It’s about 28 Jewish fingernails to 1,400 Palestinian “Aye-rabs”
that’s probably not fair avi. instincts could very well mean the same kind of brainwashing most american have been brainwashed into thinking since israel’s inception. and frankly i don’t see how 4 or 6 on casualty figures amounts to a ‘blatant lie’. practically speaking it’s not relevant. the point is the same, hardly any.
everyone knows there were no ‘battles’ because it was a massacre. that’s why news people weren’t welcome (banned).
listen, while it might not mean much to us perhaps if robert just became aware of israel intransigence it is important to him that’s he’s recently come from a pro israel position. we don’t need to be so caustic.
i think the article is for the most part informative and asks some good questions. what does it say about israel’s policy it’s dumping this system that prevents the need to pulverize gaza and randomly take kills weekly, sometimes daily? why chose engagement when you can have a multi million dollar defense system take out enemy fire?
not a bad question so why get hung up on relatively minor details?
as for robert’s larger issue of his focus on israel’s defense i think it might be appropriate to ask him to focus on how those heavily armed teens can protect themselves best from the rocks thrown by children in bil’in. now there’s a challenging dilemma.
what’s a state to do when it wants to steal someone’s land and those pesky kids keep throwing rocks at you?
Yes, Donald, Yes! Regarding the evolution of my views, see “It took until 2010 before I began to look into the criticism that I had been hearing…..Operation Cast Lead, according to Norman Finkelstein”.
This was the transition of views. Regarding people’s reactions, many are taking one sentence or so out of context and making a Federal case out of it.
Remember, I moved in a pro-Palestinian direction. That is more valuable than someone who has always been in the Palestinian camp.
I’m sorry, what Jewish exceptionalism?
There’s no disputing that, but it defies reason that one can grieve for the victims on Sderot, while being seemingly oblivious to the 1,400 deaths in Gaza.
While I applaud your efforts to question your belief system, I must say that what I also find grating about your responses is the lack of context you have considered, given the Sderot was originally an Arabb town that was ethnically cleansed of it’s rightful land owners. While no one deserves to be targeted or terrorized, it should be mentioned that none of the residents of Sderot can be considered purely innocent. They know they are living on land taken from someone else.
Lastly, it should be mentioned that the reason Sderot is targeted is not because the Palestinians in Gaza have other options, unlike the Israelis who are equipped with state of the art guided missiles. Hamas and co are criticized for targeting civilians, but this is misleading. They are aiming their rockets at the only targets that their primitive weapons can reach, and the best they can do is point the rockets in the general direction and hope they hit something.
I am pretty certain that Hamas would love nothing more than to strike an Israeli military base at will, but they can’t.
So the only option they are left with is to die quietly, or inflict pain on those attacking them.
Shingo,
The deaths of 1400 Palestinians was explicitly mentioned in the article. Really, if the participants are going to have a discussion, it shouldn’t be just picking a quote and slamming away. I mean, what’s the point? The article is a whole story. And also, I don’t think that this stuff was commonly known. It was in Ha’aretz and Yossi Melman was raging about it for three years. I happened to follow it because I’m a physics and space guy, and the subject, as well as the humanitarian aspects, resonated with me. Regarding Palestinian suffering, I have typically gotten what is available in the American press and Ha’aretz, which is not a helluva lot. It is only 6 months that I have been reading Mondoweiss and Lawrence of Cyberia, and it was a shocking experience. Lawrence of Cyberia (lefthand side of Mondoweiss) includes rich essays on Palestine that taught me a perspective that I never knew before. For a number of nights, I couldn’t sleep. To be honest, I have been fairly obsessed for the past several months.
Robert,
In that case, I apologize for the hostility you’ve experienced on this blog, but seeing as you’ve been shocked into this new awareness, understand that many of us reached that awakening long ago.
For us, that awakening marked the first day of mounting frustration, anger, the enormity of the injustice, and sheer lunacy of this conflict. It’s made many of us intolerant of those who’ve dipped their toe in the water and those who try to remain on the fence.
This has been a baptism of fire for you, and I hope you are not discouraged from writing for Phil.
Peace
Correction: Lawrence of Cyberia is 0n the right hand side of Mondoweiss.
Avi,
takes a while for sympathy to dwindle somewhat for the other side and for people to start asking the right questions.
Robert,
if you don’t see many people sympathetic to those in Sderot it’s because there are those who have been watching these atrocities for so long that their sympathies are now dry.
I don’t know how Kate and Seham have been doing their headlines for the past few years, but you get the point.
Whenever that sympathy does get into the picture, it has always been from Hasbaranics or brainwashed people, hence the reaction you’re getting.
Their sympathy is reserved for those who resist and survive oppression, not those sitting comfortably while their fellow man across some swath of land is suffering because of their ‘democratic’ country’s policies. And then when their comfort and peace is disturbed, when they suffer a tiny fraction of the trauma that the others have, they ask the same questions over and over again.
“Why do they hate us?”
link to salon.com
In any case, that was an informative post. Please post again.
“Remember, I moved in a pro-Palestinian direction. That is more valuable than someone who has always been in the Palestinian camp.”
No it isn’t. I could never be in the Zionist camp because it’s based on injustice. In Alabama in 1963 was the only valid view the white policeman turned civil rights sympathiser?
Robert – you are right, a lot of us have a hard time finding concern for the Israelis of Sderot.
First, because we know they are squatters on the land that the refugees now in Gaza were driven from. It’s hard to feel sympathy for people taking advantage of others’ loss.
Also, because in comparison to the sufferering of the Gazans, it seems immoral to focus on the relatively trivial problems of Sderot.
Also, because we have seen how the Israeli establishment uses them as a propaganda weapons, exaggerating their danger and the damage done to them. The constant reference to the “poor residents of Sderot” becomes revolting because of its hypocrisy.
Also, because it is evident that there would be no danger to the residents of Sderot if the place were evacuated, so we see it as an artificial problem, Israel maintaining the town there for its propaganda value. This fact proves how minimal the danger actually is.
So yes, I am quite capable of getting up in the morning and going to bed at night without giving a single sympathetic thought to the situation of Sderot. They can always leave; Gazans don’t have that freedom.
“Remember, I moved in a pro-Palestinian direction. That is more valuable than someone who has always been in the Palestinian camp.”
Oh, for God’s sake. Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back, I’ll have the medals ready as soon as I get this forge going.
Unbelievable. Frankly, that statement is like a thirty-year-old congratulating himself on finally getting toilet training right.
Robert, will the following result satisfy the need for defense?
On Saturday, January 17, after 22 days of pounding Gaza with bombs and missiles, tanks and mortars, ground troops and sniper fire; after 22 days of horror for the Palestinian people of Gaza who saw their schools bombed, their children murdered and maimed, and life turned into a hell on earth; after 22 days which took the lives of at least 1,200 Palestinians, including 350 children, “with more buried under rubble,” as the New York Times (1/18/09) acknowledged, and wounded another 5,200; after 22 days that left 26,000 Gazans unable to live in their homes, damaged 20,000 residential buildings, and destroyed much of Gaza’s already-battered infrastructure, Israel declared a “unilateral ceasefire.”
potsherd, your point here : we have seen how the Israeli establishment uses them as a propaganda weapons, exaggerating their danger and the damage done to them. The constant reference to the “poor residents of Sderot” becomes revolting because of its hypocrisy.
robert made this point last night (something i wish he had been more direct about in his article)
so i don’t think he is being hypocritical here. it is regrettable the death of any person, especially a death that is both predictable and preventable, is used intentionally by a government as a pretext for war. it is ‘regrettable’. of course the safety of Sderot residents doesn’t come into it. if they were safe there would be no pretext. their value to the state is their constant vulnerability.
Yes, annie, I thought Robert’s point was clear, and my reference to hypocrisy was pointed at the Israeli establishment, not directly at him.
But this is a complex issue, and among Robert’s other points, he keeps refering to the need for a missile defense system for Sderot. And it’s not that I object, per se, to such a defense system, but to the one-sidedness of a situation in which Israelis are defended (from minor hazards) but Gazans are not (from deadly hazards.)
And are not the residents of Sederot, by refusing to evacuate, complicit in the situation? By holding out themselves as targets, they encourage Gazans to fire at them, and thus encourage Israeli retaliation. In a way they are victims of the Israeli plot against Gaza, but in another way they are part of it.
If we assume that Sderot needs a missile defense, we’re assuming that missiles will be coming from Gaza, and such missiles are almost always retaliatory. This means that for every missile aimed at Sderot there are dead Gazans, the victims of Israeli fire.
Think – if Gazans possessed a defensive shield against Israeli attacks, there would be fewer Gazan casualties, thus less cause for retaliation, and Sderot would be subject to fewer attacks.
What this emphasis on a defensive shield says to me is: Israeli intends to go on slaughtering Gazans, provoking retaliation, and thus Sderot needs impunity from this retaliatory fire. So I maintain that the best protection for Sderot would be a real ceasefire.
i agree potsherd, a real ceasefire is in everyone’s best interest.
yep.
You raise an interesting argument Postherd.
The Israeli propagandists, like Chuck Schumer, heap praise on the IDF for dropping leaflets warning Gazans that their homes are about to be bombed and to evacuate. Those that remain are condemned for not heeding the warning.
So if one were to apply that logic to the residents of Sderot, are they not to blame for remaining in Sderot once Israel attacked Gaza, or at the very least, for remaining after the first rockets from Gaza landed in the nearest paddock?
By he way, in his speech before a pro Israeli demonstration at the time, Schumer asked, what other army ever gave warnings before bombing buildings – the answer is easy – the IRA.
How fitting that Schumer inadvertently compared the IDF to a terrorist organization!
As if the Gazans had anywhere to run to!
This is a typical Israeli tactic – tell the civilians they are targets if they remain, then bomb them on the roads when they try to escape. Lebanon an example of this, but at least the Lebanese had somewhere to go.
Gazan militants aren’t quite harmless, Chaos what is your opinion on their procurement of the Kornet missile and their using it against a Merkava on the Israel side of the border?
Gazan militants aren’t supposed to be harmless, yonira, that would rather defeat the purpose of calling them militants. You can’t even get a basic tautology right?
Come back to me when the Gazans use a Kornet missile on a hospital, a synagogue or a school instead of a military target, like a Merkava tank (which are apparently especially useful in flattening Gazan farms lately). You know, the sort of targets your frat buddies took on in Operation Cast Lead. Then we might have something to talk about.
Firstly, you’re conflating Hams with Hezbollah.
Secondly, it’s remarkable that an Israeli supporter would have the chutzpah to complain about weapons being used outside it’s own borders. It’s that the whole point? How many white phosphorous shells, 500 lb bombs and cluster munitions do you think Israel has used within Israel’s borders?
Needless to say, I think the procurement of Kornet missiles by Hezbollah is fine and dandy. They made mince meat of 20 other Merkava tanks on the Lebanese side of the border.
While we’re asking questions and making commentary about self defense, can you locate Najd on a map, Rob?
Chaos, nearly 20 percent of the posts on this thread are yours, you’ve repeated your Najd talking point no less than 3 times along with telling us you aren’t going to post at least 4 times. . I understand you are having a melt down, you feel bad and you are letting it all out, but this is just sad.
Five years isn’t long enough to be a Jew and learn manners. Apparently.
Chaos, nothing like mocking a person’s religious beliefs huh?
Not at all. Your atrocious behavior discredits the actual history of Judaism. You should have stayed in whatever religion you were before you converted.
Anyone else notice that the premise that Rob seems to ascribe to isn’t “Israel shouldn’t be knocking over homes and using bunker busters on homes and white phosphorous on schools because that’s just wrong,” but, “Gee, if Israel had a missile defense shield, than the Palestinians couldn’t perpetuate the cycle of violence!”
This is why there continues to be no such thing as a liberal Zionist.
i want it on record the announcement of HELENA COBBAN AS A MONDO JUDGE was supposed to be announced today (yesterday in east coast time). phil, i completely understand if you want to dump this comment in the trash pile because it is ot on this thread.
helena, i adore you. it will go up tomorrow and it’s all phil’s fault. he probably played hookie all afternoon/evening and wasn’t attending the blog or his email account. and now is not the best time for a new post because it is so late. and maybe he’s editing my introduction because i got too carried away and effusive in my adoration for your talents.
just thought i’d put that out there on the innertubes.
never mind, phil just posted helena’s introduction while i was kvetching.
;) !!!!!!
Robert,
Let me explain to you why you are being attacked. You are being attacked because an implicit premise of your argument is that Israel has the right of self defense. After all, you are recommending a defense system for Israel. This is anathema to your attackers because it is then a basis to justify Israeli actions. After all, it follows from your argument that if a missile defense system does not work or is unavailable, other defense mechanisms are justified. This is of course the common sense view held by most people and most countries. However, don’t think you will find sympathy for this view here. Annie cannot accept for example that it is morally justified to kill militants about to shot rockets.
The difference between you and them is that you want to find a solution for the problem and want to be practical. They however want “justice”. I am sure they would be happy to explain to you what that means.
Save your hot air eee. Robert has already conceded that Cast Lead had nothing to dowith self defense.
While you can’t except that the IDF is probably lying when they tell you that anyone they kill is a militant.
Yes eee, justice is anamthema to you and Witty.
Because heaven forbid that Israelis should be defenseless and terrified. That hell is reserved for Palestinians, after all.
eee,
For me, I have been following the tit-for-tat attacks for years, like most Americans. What is different recently is the perspective that I have gained from reading non-Zionist oriented blogs, such as Lawrence of Cyberia and Mondoweiss, for the first time in my life. LoC uses mostly Haaretz for it’s information source. Since it tells the Palestinian story, but uses Israeli media, it comes across as trustworthy and has the power to change minds.
I am shocked to learn, as I know now, that two things that I have thought of as good, “Jewish state” and “democracy”, are a toxic combination on the land that was Palestine. It’s toxic because it necessitates ethnic cleansing. It’s toxic because the land is holy to three religions. So the Jewish state has created an enormous volcano in the world, and American Jews are intimately part of it. Jews have the right to *move to* Israel. They don’t have the right to *kick other people out*.
I am shocked to learn…..
Yeah, you and Capt. Renault. Now here’s your winnings, Capt.
“are a toxic combination on the land that was Palestine.”
Because if we could only find the right piece of ground, a Jewish theocracy would be just hunky dory? I know, you just can’t wait to put yourself and your life under the legal authority of political religious nuts and fanatics. Because if it wasn’t for those pesky Pals, a Jewish State would be just fine, and the Ashkenazi and Sephardi, and Mizhari would all get along in a paradise of Jewish egalitarianism and liberty?
What I hear you saying is that Zionism is a fine idea, but the Palestinians are ruining it.
What I hear you saying is that Zionism is a fine idea, but the Palestinians are ruining it.
oh now now mooser, i didn’t hear robert saying that at all. and even i don’t think of ‘most jews’ as political religious nuts and fanatics.
I second annie here. Many of us, Jewish and other, did not notice or did not care to notice for many years just what horrible things are implied in any idea of a state defined by race.
right, israel was just defined as a refuge after the holocaust. i never gave it any thought and certainly i never gave palestinians any thought. nobody mentioned them, not in my world anyway.
Robert,
Were you shocked to learn that two things you thought as good, “America” and “democracy”, are a toxic combination in the land that you inhabit because it required genocide and ethnic cleansing to create?
Are you shocked to learn that the president honored on your $20 bill was a sponsor of a huge ethnic cleansing?
link to en.wikipedia.org
What do you plan to do about it?
You know, Americans can *move* anywhere in the US. They don’t have the right to *kick other people out*. Or maybe Americans do have that right, since Andrew Jackson said they did.
Until 1948, Jews moved to Palestine and did not “kick” anybody out. Every piece of land was bought. Still, the Arabs rejected this immigration and that is the reason war broke out in 1947-48 when the Arab rejected the UN partition plan. In order for the nascent Jewish state to be viable, and not be constantly mired in civil war, ethnic cleansing occurred. To reach a conclusion that this means the Jewish state should be abolished is just as ridiculous as reaching the conclusion that the US should be abolished because its creation was based on genocide and ethnic cleansing.
eee,
America did ethnically cleanse the Indians, but there are some big things that America did to ameliorate the situation.
The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. Made all Indians US Citizens.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo of 1848. Made Mexicans citizens and protected property rights. link to en.wikipedia.org
Civil Rights Act of 1964.
There is also a strong, federally-funded anti-racism culture, in addition to laws.
All this leads to what I think is the probably outcome, which is one bi-national state. Jews will still be there. The state will still have Jewish, in addition to Palestinian character.
Robert,
Let’s see. The US was founded in 1776. It took until 1924 to give Native Americans citizenship, 148 years. By that time they had been massacred countless times, restricted to reservations and had the treaties with them reneged countless times. So that makes the US good and Israel bad. The US is based on killing millions of people and shoving the rest of the Native Americans into reservations. You enjoy the fruits of those horrors and you come to tell me that a Jewish state is not a good idea because of some ethnic cleansing that occurred 62 years ago? Be serious.
As for my favorite, the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, thanks for bringing that up. The US forced Mexico to give up huge amounts of land. Why not return those lands to Mexico? And since you are a fan of bi-national countries, do you support making Mexico and the US one country? In one fell swoop you would solve the illegal immigrant problem and right historic wrongs. So do you support this idea?
>> Until 1948, Jews moved to Palestine and did not “kick” anybody out. Every piece of land was bought. Still, the Arabs rejected … the UN partition plan. In order for the nascent Jewish state to be viable … ethnic cleansing occurred.
And that is how “a good in the world” was created. Thank you once again for beautifully highlighting why you and your Zio-supremacism cultists are so incredibly hateful.
We are where we are in 2010. We are in a world with a Geneva Convention and the concept of international law. Regarding Mexico and the US, the Mexicans are not asking for binationalism, and we are not asking for binationalism.
But above all, the US is not occupying Mexico with troops and settlements.
Democracy is the most powerful thing, now. There are a minority of Jews in the lands that Israel controls. Occupation that goes on in perpetuity. It is understood to be a form of colonialism and apartheid. These are dangers much more powerful than any nuclear weapon.
Do you think it feels like 2010 to Palestinians? Do the Palestinians see the Geneva Conventions in practice, or do they see armored bulldozers and rubber-coated steel bullets? eee keeps talking about how ethnic cleansing MUST be a component of a Jewish state. Do you still feel that a state like that acts in self defense, Rob?
Robert,
But if the Mexicans were asking for a bi-national country would you agree? Because that is the situation. 99% of the Jews do not want a bi-national country like 99% of Americans. So what are you going to do?
Of course the US is occupying Mexico. It just annexed the what it wanted under the auspices of the Guadalupe Hidalgo treaty.
There is only one solution, a negotiated 2 state solution. Everything else is a pipe dream that will lead to violence. Thank you though for trying to force down our throats a solution you would never accept.
Yes, it is easy for you to say we are in 2010 and let’s forget all the US did and focus on Israel. And how convenient to strut forward international law when you as a country have a veto in the UN council. If Israel had such veto, everything it would do would be “legal” also. Don’t you see the hypocrisy in your position?
99 % yada yada
Annie,
Once upon a time, about 62 years ago, what Jewish communities wanted could be ignored. But we are in 2010 as Robert says. Times have changed. Too bad.
How come Zionists keep wanting to live the heady days that culminated in the World Wars and the Holocaust? Yeah, eee, of course Israel resembles the United States at its worse, when it was ethnically cleansing the Mexican population from Texas and the Southwest, and eradicating whole tribes of Native Americans. THAT IS THE POINT! That is the point of why we have Geneva Conventions! Do you think your ancestors would really like it that you harken back to the days that made the death camps in which they died even possible?
earth to you dingbat, jewish people don’t speak in one voice. it is you silencing those other voices pretending there’s some ratio of 99% (you speak for natch) vs the lone 1%.
you’re dingy
Annie,
Do you deny that 99% of Jews in Israel are against a bi-national state?
eee,
There are some fundamental things that you’re missing here. Colonies are specifically illegal, as of the 1960s. If the settlements are pulled out, then a Jewish state is possible. But there is no indication whatsoever that that will happen. Jewish attachment to the West Bank is too strong. There is no way that occupying another people in perpetuity can ever be legal, even if you have a veto on the Security Council. The day will come when you will dance the “Dabke” together with the “Hora”, and the TV will have public service announcements of “Palestinian History Month.”
let’s review your brilliance shall we.
hello!
Robert,
Some Jews have strong attachments to the West Bank but a clear majority in Israel agrees to a two state solution based on the Clinton Parameters. And that needs to negotiated. Of course, if there is no negotiated solution, Israel can always withdraw unilaterally to the 1967 borders if it wants to, and then the Palestinians and the settlers can figure out how to share power.
The day will come when the Star Spangled Banner will be sung in Spanish and during the Super Bowl half time there will be bull fighting. Just as likely as what you imagine for us.
Apparently not. It turns out that many of those deeds of sale weer forgeries.
Even so, Jews only accumilated 7% of the land through purchase, which means that a Jewish state was impossible.
False again. The Zionist terro gangs had alrady enthnicalyl cleansed 200,000 Palestinians from their land, long before any declartion of independence. Furthermore, Ben Gurion only accepted the partition in principal, but rejected the borders, meaning, he rejected the partition in practice – what is a partiton plan without borders?
You have it backwards. Ethnic cleansing led to civil war, and the war subsequently led to further enthnic cleansing.
Israel is not a Jewish state, nor has it ever been. Unless of course, you want to concede that it is NOT a democracy.
Annie,
It is clear from what I wrote that I meant 99% of Israeli Jews, but feel free to misunderstand me on purpose.
oh, and just to remind you about 6 months ago some shas or religious knesset person just called for a binational state.
either way it makes no difference what you or 99% of anybody thinks or wants vs facts on the ground. the facts on the ground are that the ‘jewish state’ has immersed itself so far up the behind of whatever area is supposed to become the palestinian state extracting it appears completely remote. ask yourself what percentage of israeli jews have some brilliant plan to extract those people or even think they should be extracted.
the simplest most reasonable plan given the actions and progression of goi looks like simply giving all the people equal rights. that’s how it looks from here. so wishing for a reality ignoring facts on the ground or any plan for them or any WILL for them is silly. and if you think 99% of israeli jews really want two states you are delusional. there’s far more than that who will never be happy until their dream of greater israel is fulfilled, and that group is growing w/no end in site.
there may come a time (sooner than you think) rational people in the region on both sides of this conflict will wake up look over at each other and realize their ‘allies’ aren’t all the same ethnicity. that’s already happening on the left.
And how convenient to strut forward international law when you as a country have a veto in the UN council. If Israel had such veto, everything it would do would be “legal” also. Don’t you see the hypocrisy in your position?
Why are you begrudging this when Israel has been the beneficiary of that veto eee?
Pretty soon, that 99% will represent less than half of Israel’s popultion, so it will be irrelevant anyway.
i did not misunderstand you. my response ’99% yada yada’ was my commentary wrt your frequent usgae of this bogus “99% of the jews” crap. i don’t like it and that was my way of telling you that. i think it is anti semitic and perpetuates a myth.
if you don’t like that so be it. or you could just learn to watch your tongue and find a way to communicate sans your %’s guestimation crutch.
eee,
The events of the 2000s, including the separation wall and appropriation of farmland, surrounding Jerusalem, etc, have made a two state solution exceedingly unlikely. That’s the thesis of Mondoweiss, and Mearsheimer, for example. That’s why this is an important site. As far as America is concerned, I would be delighted if the Star Spangled Banner were sung in Spanish, delighted. Bull fighting during half-time? Besides for the Spanish-Mexican discrepancy, why not? No weirder than the commercials, that’s for sure. Keep in mind: Israel does nothing whatsoever, Israel will be 30% Arab by 2030 or so. An Arab-flavored Israel is already on the way. Jews will already have to route around Arabs to be together. So what I think will happen is that Jews will have to route around a few more Arabs. And a great deal of justice and peace will be gained in the bargain.
Annie,
There is nothing bogus about the fact that 99% of Israeli Jews do not want a one state solution. That you do not like it, does not make it false. Even Uri Avnery is against the one state solution, and you cannot go much more to the left than that.
“Still, the Arabs rejected this immigration”
They rejected the plan to create a Jewish state in their land. They did not want to be subjugated to immigrants.
“In order for the nascent Jewish state to be viable, and not be constantly mired in civil war, ethnic cleansing occurred. ”
But since the creation of a Jewish State was an immoral act, that does not provide an excuse for the ethnic cleansing.
The Jewish state should be abolished because it is evil in conception, evil in its creation, and evil in conduct.
The very idea of an ethnically-based state is evil.
The means by which Israel was created were evil.
The conduct of Israel throughout its existence has been evil.
Israel should cease to be a Jewish state, and become a state of all its citizens.
Robert,
The Clinton parameters were rejected in 2000 because Arafat could not bring himself to compromise on the right of return. It is the right of return which is holding up the two state solution. The two state solution is just as likely today as it was in 48 and 67.
By 2030 the Arabs in Israel will be at most 30% and their numbers will not grow as a percentage any more. So what? They would still be a minority.
In any case, you are living in a fantasy world. What you are suggesting does not even work in Belgium and there is no example of one Arab country that is a liberal democracy. The Palestinians themselves are ruled by a theocracy on one side and a kleptocracy on the other. But of course, why not experiment with the Israeli Jews? What have you got to lose anyway? If it does not work, you will not be harmed anyway.
The trouble with your examples, eee, is that you assume everyone must share your racism.
The examples that you t hink are so horrifying don’t bother most Americans a bit.
” … Native Americans … massacred countless times, restricted to reservations and had the treaties with them reneged countless times. … US is based on killing millions of people … horrors It took 148 yearsto give Native Americans citizenship. So that makes the US good and Israel bad.”
In summary, then, The US is bad. We want to be bad, too.
“and you come to tell me that a Jewish state is not a good idea because of some ethnic cleansing that occurred 62 years ago?”
A Jewish state is not a good idea at all, regardless of ethnic cleansing.
eljay,
“And that is how “a good in the world” was created. ”
But that was then. Don’t forget that ethnic cleansing is currently not necessary.
“Nablus: Israel gives villagers 24 hours to hit the road before leveling Tana”
link to palestine-info.co.uk
Robert,
This was written by two very left leaning Ha’aretz columnists:
link to guardian.co.uk
Maybe it will help you understand that a bi-national state is not in the cards whatever happens.
fine, since you insist on using percentages presented as fact back it up w/a poll. you are missing my point anyway. i didn’t step into this argument to debate your point, i stepped into because i’m not into your sloppy anti semitic framing. you didn’t say israeli jews . you said “99 % of the jews”, again! so stop w/the shitty framing already and get off my back. i’m not getting dragged into debating the merits of the anti one staters w/someone who articulates a palestinian state as ‘ temporarily demilitarized after palestinians forfeit their international humanitarian rights’. (or whatever wording that was, maybe that was hophmi anyway). show me the way to two states, then will talk about it. until then it is what it is, one big apartheid state.
Annie,
The way to two states is clearly explained in the Geneva Accord.
It means the Palestinians give up the right of return, but there is no other option.
link to en.wikipedia.org
How does that jibe with your earlier comments about supporting the formation of a Palestinian state? (A distinct one, not part of a bi-national single state).
oh really. that should be a neat trick.
False. The Clinton parameters weer accepted by both sides at Taba. As Israeli foreign minister at the time, Shlomo Ben Ami, stated that Arafat was not concerned with the refugee problem.
False. It is also the status of Jerusalem, the settlements, the fact that Israel refuses to allow a Palestinian state to emerge, and the fact that Israels refuses to recognize Palestinian self determination.
False. Israel had no control of the OT and Jerusalem at the time.
I agree, it’s not important. The CIA has already predicted that Israel will cease to exist b then anyway.
cWhat you are suggesting does not even work in Belgium and there is no example of one Arab country that is a liberal democracy.
So what? The is only one example of one Jewish country, and it’s not even a democracy, though it is liberal for now.
The Palestinians themselves are ruled by a theocracy on one side and a kleptocracy on the other.
Israel is ruled by a hybrid of these. Your point?
Of course there is, The fact you don’t like it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. eee.
Stop being such a child.
I don’t know why people keep asking me to stick around. Your contribution to this blog is infinitely more valuable than mine, Shingo.
Every other country in the world has left the 19th century behind them, because they all understand that the age of colonization and empire-building is Dead And Buried.
All but Israel of course, which thinks that because it missed out on the 19th century it is now entitled to play catch-up.
Picker, why would you be “delighted?” if the Star-Spangled Banner was sung in Spanish? Were Spanish Americans significantly involved in defense of that coastal fort site during the 1812 War, the war that finally severed Britain’s claim that e.g., Irish Americans were British subjects and so could legally be taken off US ships by force and pressed into the Crown’s military forces?
I disagree Chaos,
You are far more entertaining and enjoyable to read than I am. I’m just here to debunk the Hasbarats where I can.
I’m glad to see you back.
Robert, I think you’ve grasped the most essential point.
Annie cannot accept for example that it is morally justified to kill militants about to shot rockets.
allegedly. no different than iraq. like in falujah where ALL the innocent civilians were women and children. no man, unless he’s old and cripple and even then it’s rare, who our soldiers kill is a civilian. in a war zone all males are targets, insurgents, militants whatever. shoot first accuse second and then only if some witness comes forward w/a videotape or something is there maybe a retraction, then that’s collateral damage. it happens over and over and over.
even when they killed that family on the beach in gaza w/the little girl, the attack that ended the previous ceasefire..they were allegedly ‘responding’. then they killed some others (blew up a car) and claimed they were on their way to attack them. all this preemption stinks.
not one person died as a result of rockets, mortars or bombs during the ceasefire and cast lead still happened. it was going to happen regardless of rockets, israel started planning it before the ink fried on the ceasefire and eveyone knows that. they went into an agreement w/fraudulent intentions.
disgusting. shooting fish in a barrel. it’s sadistic and gruesome what they did. they could have evacuated women and children. they used them as guinea pigs for their new dime weapons and now they have a little pr problem that won’t go away and they’re going to fix it w/a hasbara campaign called ‘israeli action network’. NOT.
Annie,
Preemption stinks unless it saves your life. How I wish the US would have preempted the Nazis in 1933 when they were still relatively weak. 50 million lives could have been saved. But no, because of thinking like yours, the US joined the war only after the attack on Pearl Harbor, giving Hitler plenty of time to ramp up his murder machine.
And the best thing about pre-emtion is that no proof or evidence is required, because the evidence is destroyed by the preemption, unless there is evidence after the fact, and Israel simply claims it was a case of faulty intelligence.
How I wish the US would have preempted the Zionists in 1938 when they were still relatively weak. Tents of thousands of lives could have been saved.
On the contrary, the US government knew the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming, but chose to make it into a sacrificial land…a bit like Israel does with Sderot.
It’s funny how you justify preemption. Preemption was the public premise for Nazi Germany bypassing the Maginot line and invading France. Oh yes! And when the US indulged in preemption in Iraq, where did that take us?
And let’s not get started on the centerpiece of Israeli preemption… Plan Dalet and the long range plans to raze Palestinian villages and permantly conquer the land by colonial militant force.
Japan had a public defense pact with Germany. Japan attacked the US, and Hitler honored his agreement. I bet the Chinese wish the US had preempted Japan, instead of merely cutting off its oil supplies. Roosevelt campaigned on a peace platform but, unknown to American voters, was already counting on provoking Japan to attack his own country as a backdoor way of forcing Hitler to join Japan, hence Roosevelt obtained what he really wanted, a war against Hitler. In this manner FDR preempted the wish of the American people. Britain and France set the course for Hitler’s rise at Versailles; Wilson was gulled. He later said so.
Hindsight is 20/20 isn’t it eee? It’s a very simplistic way of understanding history and in the end leads to just one thing: kill, kill, kill. You end up becoming what you fear. Again, I want to point out that you can’t seem to conceptualise any solutions except ones that involves violence. This is not good.
Berlusconi said in February he feared Israel would use nuclear weapons against Iran:
Italy PM said ‘not even Obama can stop Israeli attack on Iran’, WikiLeaks cable reveals
The Australian Intelligence Community have decided there is a risk an Israeli attack on Iran may go nuclear (and that if Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons it is only as a deterrence):
Intelligence chiefs fear nuclear war between Israel and Tehran
Time for a pre-emptive strike on Israel? After Israel nukes Tehran and kills 9 million people, everybody will be asking why nobody made a pre-emptive strike on Israel won’t they? Sound improbable? So why is Netanyahu describing Iranians as Amalek? Do you agree with Arutz Sheva when they write [my emphasis]:
Jewish tradition holds that the Amalekites are the undying enemy of the Jews. It also showed the way to the other nations as to how to destroy Israel.
Though no identifiable Amalekites remain in the world, the Torah commands the Jews to wipe out every last vestige of the evil that Amalek represents. Every year, when the Torah passage known as Zachor is read, Jews stream to their synagogues to hear the verse, ” ‘Remember what Amalek did to you on the way, upon your departure from Egypt’… ‘You shall erase the memory of Amalek from beneath the heavens, you shall not forget.’.”
It sound like incitement to genocide to me.
Robert,
By the way, in the Nov 4 2008 incident Israel attacked Hamas militants digging a tunnel into Israel, the same kind of tunnel that was used to kidnap Shalit and kill his other tank crew members while they were in Israel. Would you categorize this as legitimate self defense by Israel?
By the way, that story is complete rubbish and had been debunked. If the tunnel was intended to kidnap IDF soldiers, the IDF could have laid an ambush at the tunnel entrance into Israel, or simply moved any IDF troops out of harms way.
Shallot was captured the day after Israel had kidnapped 2 Palestinian brothers from Gaza city.
No because as with the attack on Gaza, there were other options apart from the one to attack.
So much for your Hasbara.
Where was this debunked Shingo?
Last time I checked, it was the guy holding the gun that is supposed to prove the murder is justified, not the corpse on the ground. There was never any proof that there was a tunnel of that sort in that location at all, presented by the IDF. Let alone that the tunnel would have penetrated Israel several months to a year later (since even if there was a tunnel, it was still completely within Gaza’s border).
The tunnel came close to the border fence, yet Israel claimed it had ïntelligence” that the purpose of the tunnel was to kidnap IDF soldiers.
link to counterpunch.org
Chomsky concurred:
link to almoltaqa.ps
link to palestinethinktank.com
Jimmy Carter also laughed of the suggestion that the tunnel was intended to kidnap IDF troops.
yep
That’s the beauty of pre emptive strikes – the evidence gets destroyed by the premptive strike.
It’s a win win.
Robert,
Your posts were useful and informative. The progression you underwent came through to me in your first post. I am not sure why you became a target tonight. I think some see Hasbara around every corner. Perhaps you were just being vetted. In any case I hope you join us again.
Robert,
I would recommend that you fight tooth and nail for your truth, and question EVERY assertion made, Israel’s, Norman Finkelstein’s, Chaos’, everybody’s.
And, I think you are on more than the right track as far seeking a mutually humanizing solution, rather than a mutually demonizing one.
Good advice Witty. Of course, question EVERY assertion made means being able to back up your own.
I suppose that taking this advice will be your New Year’s resolution?
Wonderful, Rob! You’ve managed to win yonira, eee and Witty to your defense! Good work!
Incidentally, Witty, there is no “your” truth. You don’t own it. There is the truth, and then there are assumptions, delusions, deceptions and outright lies. The fact that you seek to elevate your narrow ethnocentric perspective and define the whole entire world outside of Zionism as false speaks pretty soundly as to which of those categories you actually fall into.
I find it interesting how Witty’s “truth” is the the kinf of truth that is never reported in by any news sources or supported by any evidence.
Robert,
Please question my assertions, strongly and honestly.
Facts, weights and significance, recommendations.
We’ll do better than that Witty. We’ll prove that they are falsities, myths and outright lies, as we always do.
Don’t worry Witty. We have Robert’s back.
Yes, Robert, please do what Witty recommends. Pay particular attention to facts being justified directly or implicitly as “self-defense.”
RW,
I think that the universal truth is the sum total of what everybody thought or experienced at a given time. Also, I think that finding micro-quibbles to attack a position, *even one that you agree with* , is a massive waste of time, and serves bad ends.
“I think that the universal truth is the sum total of what everybody thought or experienced at a given time.”
Including the dead? Then why don’t they speak up, damnit?
In practical everyday terms, you just said the victor gets to tell the story. And we can make our own truth, simply by silencing those who have another.
A rather subjectivist theory of truth, don’t you think? Still, we’re not here to discuss epistemology.
“we’re not here to discuss epistemology.”
I’m happy to.
And eee is here to research it.
I think that the universal truth is the sum total of what everybody thought or experienced at a given time.
i hold truth to a higher standard than that.
Actually, ‘universal truth’ is an irrefutable fact, or, as absolute as you can possibly get, ie: what goes up, must come down.
To the ancient Chinese sages, some twelve ‘universal principles’ were observed in our world, based on twelve irrefutable facts to do with natural phenomena. These twelve principles were configured into a system so as to help guide rulers of troubled nations and also to help anchor seekers of truth and enlightenment on their arduous internal journeys.
If anyone is interested in these 12 principles, you can find them listed and explained in any forward to the I Ching, the Book of Changes.
It’s too involved for me to go into it right here and right now – too much of a distraction to the thread’s theme.
thank you.
what goes up, must come down.
regardless if anyone is there to witness or experience it.
‘zactly, annie – also regardless of WHO says it.
Truth is truth is truth.
I didn’t really understand that last post.
What are you speaking about more specifically?
Sderot’s main problem is not Gazan missiles, but poverty and governmental neglect. They are actually longing for the Qassam times, when they would be paid attention to by the State.
The cynicism of the Israeli government knows no bounds, as we have witnessed many times. Sderot is a very useful tool in the propaganda wars into which Israel pours a great deal of time and money. Viewers of the network news would have been easily persuaded, with the transformation of Sderot into a TV studio, that the whole of Israel was about to vanish under bombs at any moment, while of course the assault on captive civilians in Gaza was banished from those networks. So it is hardly surprising that there is no rush to give Sderot real protection – its value as a symbol far exceeds any real danger to its citizens – and still we have the useful idiots braying the press that Israel is under attack from Gaza.
Talking of useful idiots, 3e and the rest do a good job of trotting out the standard cliches and myths in order to justify Jewish supremacism and their imagined entitlement to the land and property of others. They can never admit that they are sharing a country, and the other 50%, most of whom have no vote or rights, are equally entitled to decide on the future of the joint territory. There is no separate Palestine, despite their mythology, principally because Israel has ensured it – the two peoples are entwined in one land. That Jewish people only should decide on their future is usually, and correctly, called apartheid.
Good post.
For info on the Phalanx/CIWS defense system, look in the comments here too:
link to forden.armscontrolwonk.com
and here :
link to globalsecurity.org
It seems that most of the shells not intercepting the target would go into the Mediterranean, thereby making it more of a danger for dolphins than people down below.
You realized of course the total hypocrisy of the declarations pretending to want to shield the population from Qassams. As long as they stay only slightly more dangerous than bottle rockets, Israel is more than happy to keep this threat ongoing from Gaza, and to sacrifice the occasional Israeli, as as long as there is an excuse to pillar Gazans again in the future (hoping they will eventually pour into Egypt when they’ve had enough) and keeping general threat levels and instability up, generating sympathy from the world population.
The last thing they want is a missile defense system that actually works.
I also wanted to post this here, since we’re speaking of Gaza :
“GAZAN YOUTH’S MANIFESTO FOR CHANGE” from Pulse media :
link to pulsemedia.org
It goes on from there. It seems to me the most cogent and intelligent statement about Gaza that I’ve seen, much more so than those from the fiddling fools and arrogant bureaucrats pretending to do something about it.
Well the latter 1/3 of those comments were nasty.
Avi, Shingo and Chaos: obviously Robert is experiencing great change in his thinking. It seems to me this is to be applauded, not attacked. We need these transformations to be happening more. So is Mondoweiss a place where this is to be encouraged – with a final goal of resolution of I/P – or just somewhere that you can hang out and be hostile to newcomers who may not yet be perfectly formed by your standards?
I think eee’s cult thesis is absurd, but your game of get the guests fits this part of his diagnosis perfectly:
2) Any person not completely supporting the belief system is attacked
Sumud,
I just learned from reading Ali Abunimah’s book that “sumud” means “steadfastness”.
hey robert. it is very rare comment sections here reach 200 comments and you’re only 6 away, that’s a good sign.
;)
That’s right Robert. FYI I’m not Palestinian but I chose that handle as a respectful tribute and sign of solidarity. Sumud is a broad concept, with multiple manifestations:
link to en.wikipedia.org
I like the idea because it’s a positive, inspirational and unique to Palestine.
- – - – -
If you’re interested in the topic of Israel and defence, specifically the defence industry, you should check out the great Jeff Halper (of ICAHD) on Israel’s arms industry:
‘Interview – Jeff Halper – The Global Pacification Industry’
link to youtube.com
One of the hair-raising points he makes is that the occupation of Palestine is in part about (or has become about) providing a captive population on which Israel’s arm’s manufacturers can test their weapons. You’ve mentioned that Rafael will be selling it’s missile defence system outside Israel. I’ve written before at length about Rafael’s playstation-style “See and Shoot” system of remote control machine guns on Gaza’s border, being “manned” by young female Israeli soldiers, some teenagers. There have been hundreds of incidents of Palestinians in Gaza being shot by this system, some militants, and lots of civilians. If you’ve been reading MW regularly of late the topic of Palestinian children being shot in and beyond the buffer zone has been covered several times. I’ll link to a previous post of mine that has links to Haaretz & The National (UAE) and also a DCI (Defence of Children International) call for the shooting of children in Gaza to end:
link to mondoweiss.net
Seham & Kate have also highlighted the issue several times this month in their news digests:
December 12:
link to mondoweiss.net
December 20:
link to mondoweiss.net
You mean, like a particular form of “hazing”… “Get out your paddles for the new guy !”
I agree. Their factual assertions are correct at the same time, though, it’s right to point them out. One of the problems with this issue is that there has been SO MUCH disinformation and misinformation for so long, that those who have taken the trouble to roll it all back and recover the reality (It’s like the myth of Sisyphus) immediately recognize factual errors, and one tends to get oversensitive and aggressive.
Some of Robert’s comments were misunderstood. I think the central point here is the divergence between official statements (pretexts) and actions, and how the threats from Qassams (which are real) have always been exaggerated to play up sympathy from the outside world. You can see in videos on the web as well events during rocket attacks in Israel, in which official announcements are hurled over loudspeakers for inhabitants to take cover. This adds to the climate of fear and tension, which is deliberately manipulated by the government in order to demonize the “enemy” seeking to “destroy us”.
What is truly remarkable :
In the choice between security and expansion, Israel has chosen expansion – not security. The very injustices at the root causes of the rockets firing in the first place are not addressed. So, officials constantly claim that security is a prime objective, while carrying out policies which undermine that very security (discrimination, ethnic cleansing, land theft, assassinations, etc). They clearly need a certain level of insecurity to be able to reach their objectives.
excellent analysis lareineblanche.
x 2.
lareineblanche ~ You’ve captured exactly what I meant (and expanded on it), in a much less grumpy fashion, thanks.
Avi, Shingo & Chaos – I want to clarify this:
I know that you’re all focused on resolving I/P, and I don’t mean to devalue your contributions, so I apologise if what I wrote sounded like that. I’ve learnt much along the way from each of you. I just think it’s very important that we make space here for people who are questioning what they’ve been taught and told for many years. It doesn’t have to be uncritical, but it doesn’t have to be hostile either.
I agree entirely Sumud,
But as others have explained, there’s no harm in correcting newcomers along the way. Being invited to contribute to Mondoweiss carries with it quote a lot of responsibility. While I applaud Phil’s initiative to invite Robert (and hopefully others), let’s be reminded that there is a great deal more traffic on this site than just those who comment here, so disinformation can come from even those with the best of intentions.
I already expressed my hope that Rob will continue to write future articles for Mondoweiss, but that does not mean false or flawed analysis should not be challenged along the way.
Agreed!
For my part I didn’t think that the original article showed an Israel-only sympathy or sensibility.
Seham drew our attention the other day to the views of some military authority that Israel could not defend itself against Hizb’s thousands of rockets except by threatening or carrying out a massive destruction of everything in Lebanon. Which implies, for good or ill, a limited degree of convergence of military power between Israel and Hizb. I would be interested to know Robert’s view, since he’s ‘a space guy’, of whether in principle this convergence could be negated by technological defence, Vulcan Phalanx or whatever?
Hughes.
Only to a limited degree, in other words, no, not really. Hezbollah can fire thousands of rockets, which will overwhelm defenses. A few things that israel can do: If Hezbollah fires numerous rockets, the radar can indicate where they will land, and Israel can pick the rockets that are going toward populated areas only. Here’s another idea: Warn individual Israelis via text message that a missile is on the way. This should give a few 10s of seconds of warning. link to dailytech.com
This idea is interesting, but a bit sketchy! Best not to get into a war.
Thanks for interesting and stylish reply. I hope we’ll hear more from you.
annie,
I wasn’t trying to be caustic, nor was I interested in attacking him for the sole purpose of attacking him as some readers and he himself imply down below.
Robert needs to understand that he needs to do a better job at separating his own personal impressions and sentiments from articles that he writes about such matters as this so-called missile shield. The personal transformation that which he claims to have underwent need not be interweaved into an article about corruption within the military apparatus or the conflict itself.
So, how many themes can one squeeze into one article? That’s a rhetorical question.
In addition, I don’t consider it nit picking when it comes to inaccurate information. If that’s Robert’s defense, then I wonder why he chose aerospace as his field of study. Surely, if a shuttle blows up on its way to Earth’s orbit, Robert isn’t going to retort with, “Ahhh, you’re just nitpicking”.
Details are important, especially when it comes to the history of nations and the history of violent conflict which detractors seek to revise over and over. And, it is extremely important to do so. Do you remember how Phil was surprised to find out that in 1947 in response to the Partition Plan the “Arabs” — in December 1947 — did not in fact violently attack “the Jews”, that it was a myth?
To dismiss criticism as “nit-picking” or “seeing Hasbara around every corner” won’t win the defensive writer any praise or respect, certainly not credibility.
The article would be important if one knew exactly which theme the author was pursing — his own personal transformations, or the technical aspects of the missile system.
The proverbial cherry on top was the description that Robert spent some time in Israel as a toddler and recently honeymooned there, as if that is supposed to give the reader important background information about the author, or lend credibility to his article.
But, more to the point, I think the entire framing of the so-called missile “defense” system is wrong for the following reasons:
1. From a cost benefit perspective it is simply not worth it. During the Gulf War in 1991, for example, the Patriot missile batteries that were stationed in Israel were useless against the technologically primitive Scuds. Israel then set out to develop an anti-missile system which turned out to be a failure.
2. The residents of Sderot have shelters in which they can take refugee when a rocket is fired from Gaza. The people of Gaza do not have such luxuries.
3. Equating the suffering of the people of Gaza, the sheer misery and destruction of both human life and property to the two dozen killed Israelis over a period of 8 years is ludicrous; Robert expresses no outrage, nor does he show the same curiosity in what Gazans undergo on a daily basis. So, in that context his article and his views are offensive.
In the end, I’d like to point out the uncritical reaction by many who are thinking with their emotions instead of thinking with their heads. Robert comes across as a nice guy, innocent, well-meaning. And while that may be the case, being a “nice guy” does not exempt him from criticism. I stand by my criticism of his article, although admittedly, I could have used softer language.
As an aside, the newly started discussion revolving around the meaning of truth further below is interesting. But, commenters seem to forget that there is no such thing as Universal Truth. With the exception of math, Greek philosophy tells us that each person has his/her own truth. It’s certainly a philosophy to which I subscribe as, ultimately, no two human beings can experience the same event and/or perceive the same event in similar ways.
ok avi, you make some good points. this might be a good time to disclose i googled the authors name and intercepted a thread in which he was going to bat against an ardent israel supporter before i got too deep into criticizing him. that probably cooled my heels a little. we all choose our own battles in life.
hanging out on these threads can be a battlefield and to the uninitiated, especially one who jumps into it w/an article that is less than direct wrt it’s point, well…i don’t know. but i see your point. i’ll jump in down below, i’ve just been over on the rogue thread and posted a comment as long as yours..so i have some catching up to do. see ya.
Avi and Annie,
Thanks for the response. While putting the post together, I spoke with Phil and my wife, and we agreed that including my own personal transformation with it helped to humanize the story. It’s sort of like “Aviation Week and Space Technology” meets my diary. But it also expresses my own genuine outrage over the story, which has been brewing for 3 years.
Also, I got a lot of flak over the cease-fire issue, but the missile issue transcends the cease-fire. The cease-fire only took place for a 6 month time-scale before Operation Cast Lead. But the defense system could and should have been used years earlier. There were Qassam missiles before the Gaza pullout. Had Israel followed a straightforward logic in defending the population, as happened during Entebbe, there would never have been a Cast Lead. Every government must defend it’s population from attack, otherwise the government has no legitimacy. What is the point of a government that won’t defend it’s citizens?
That having been said, a cease-fire is far, far preferable to technology.
Regarding cost-benefit, this would have worked because the cost of ammunition of the Vulcan-Phalanx is relatively low. It’s just a lump of metal.
Regarding killings of Gazans versus killings of Sderot residents, it is the perspective of my readings, which is mostly Haaretz. Only in the past 6 months is it including non-Zionist material, which came about because I was investigating stuff from Haaretz which puzzled me.
At least Haaretz is complete enough that you can learn some things from Gideon Levy and Amira Hass, and that leads you to learn more. The American corporate media is like a closed bubble. You just wouldnt have a clue. You dont learn anything.
Had Israel followed that logic all along, there would never have been a Nakba.
Had Israel followed a straightforward logic in defending the population, as happened during Entebbe, there would never have been a Cast Lead.
Only a fool would believe that Robert.
Since 1956 (or earlier), including the Lavon Affair and the attack on the USS Liberty, it has been standard practice for Israel to incite violence. The decision to carry out Cast Lead took place long before November 2008.
Moshe Dayan explained this is detail with respect to provoking Syria. They would push their tanks further and further into Syrian territory until Syria fired, thereby giving the Israelis the pretext to launch the attack they wanted. This tactic suits armies that know they have military superiority.
Shingo, what does that have to do with Entebbe though? You are notorious for bringing up the most irrelevant talking points. Are you saying that the hostages flying from Greece incited violence?
Hold it, Shingo. You’re making a strong statement there, and can you back it up? I’ll ask the same thing of you that I did of Avi and Citizen below. The things that you mentioned did happen. Lavon Affair happened and was a disaster for Israel, USS Liberty, as far as I have read, there is some EC-121 transcript evidence that shows that the Israelis, knew that it was American, but it’s still vague. Regarding Syria, there was something specific to be gained.
Can you back up the statement that Cast Lead had nothing whatsoever to do with stopping Qassam rockets? I’m referring here in a strategic sense, where the goal was to make the Gazan community force the rocket firing men to refrain from launching missiles?
If Israel was interested in stopping rockets from Gaza they had only to comply with the negotiated conditions of the cease fire, which on their part meant ending the blockade of Gaza. Israel’s problem is it wanted to end the rockets and continue the collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza.
Norman Finkelstein on what he thinks the Gaza Massacre was really about:
‘Foiling Another Palestinian “Peace Offensive”: Behind the bloodbath in Gaza’
link to normanfinkelstein.com
Please refer to the long posts I have just posted above which document a good deal of history since the disengagement.
The short answer to your question is yes. On December 17th 2008, Hamas proposed a return to a ceasefire as per the June 2008 ceasefire agreement. Israel rejected the offer.
Now given that very few rockets were being fired into Israel for 6 months (none of which were fired by Hamas, who were arresting and killing those that were doing so), and that Israel’s MFA had acknowledged how careful Hamas had been to observe and enforce the ceasefire, there can be no dispute that Israel had an option to put an end to rocket attacks immediately.
Instead, Israel chose to prolong the conflict (and rocket attacks) for another 3 weeks. In fact, not only did the US veto all calls for a ceasefire at the UN, Olmert even boasted publicly that he had interrupted Bush during a speech and ordered him to order Condoleeza Rice to abstain from voting for a ceasefire resolution that the US had helped to draft at the UN.
Hence, it is clear that Cast Lead had NOTHING to do rockets attacks.
FYI. I can provide sources to all of the above.
You’re just bound and determined to blame Operation Cast Lead on the Palestinians, aren’t you?
About as much as Entebbe has to do with Cast Lead.
The point is that Israel has an undisputed history of incitement and creating pretexts or inventing a casus belli to atatck it’s neighbors. So for Robert to act as though it is incoceivable that Cast Lead would have happened in spite of the rocekts is the epitome of niavette.
Robert :
I’ll post this cable again here :
link to 213.251.145.96
You could have a kid flinging rocks with a slingshot on the Lebanese border, and could technically argue that an invasion leveling whole neighborhoods was the result of the kid with the slingshot, as some kind of “cause and effect” argument. The argument can be made, but that doesn’t mean that it makes any sense.
The central point here (again) is that Israel is deliberately creating a climate of fear, belligerence and provocation, which inevitably results in some responses from time to time. This in turn creates pretexts for aggression.
it woudl be a waate of time either way. The Winograd Commission concluded that Israel intiated the war.
hi robert, haaretz is good…some of the most informative (if not the most informative) conversations in israel take place in the hebrew press. i urge you to read coteret which is english translations of the hebrew press w/commentary mostly by did remez but not exclusively. spend at least an hr there including all the recent posts and ‘top posts’ listed on the right hand side. bookmark it because the ‘category’ listing on the right are very helpful when doing research.
i also recommend 972mag. these are all excellent israeli journalists and one can feel that pulse of what’s happening there in their writing.
good luck.
Annie,
Thanks for that. I have begun to read all of those websites.
Robert
Robert’s article is premised on the notion that the Israeli motive for Op Cast Lead was to defend Israel against Hamas rocket attacks. Watching American TV taught him that, or reinforced his opinion of that. He did not say what his Israel trips added. I view the responses in this thread by many here as comments simply trying to factually inform him that MSM “self-defense” narrative is not true.
He’s got a long way to go before he is able to understand the reality on the ground. Even when he writes both to clarify and to expand on his position, he still couches his argument in terms of defense of Sderot.
Frankly, I have no interest in such nonsense. From an objective point of view each country does have the right to defend itself, but dedicating an entire article to that particular issue within the context of Israel’s massacre in Gaza is quite honestly abominable.
Robert is still a kid, he’ll learn, if not today, then next year and if not next year then next decade. Wisdom comes suddenly. One day he’ll realize that the views that he advances are foolish. And I’m being generous.
Yes it is frustrating isn’t it? Robert has even accepted that his argument about self defense was not in reference to Cast Lead, yet he then references Cast Lead as an act of self defense.
This cognitive dissonance is reminiscent of the circular reasoning that Bush would use to justify the Iraq invasion once it was established there were no WMD or links to 911
Having acknowledge there were no WMD, Bush insisted he would do it all again because Saddam posed a threat (only true if WMD existed) and that he the rules had changed (in a post 911 world).
One can only put this down to his de-programming. To his credit, he only started 6 months ago and that’s a short time frame in which to have compiled a lifetime of indoctrination. There are bound to be a few legacy bugs in the system.
Shingo,
Misunderstanding here. God, just one word caused it. I said used the word “defense” some posts up, but I meant *missile defense*, that is, shooting down missiles. It wasn’t referring (in that context) to Cast Lead.
No it’s not a misunderstanding, it’s a case of cause and effect.
If you start a fight, you lose any claims to self defense from the ensuing violence. If a man rapes a woman, he doesn’t get to claim self defense if she retaliates.
In the case of shooting down missiles, it’s not self defense when the rockets start flying if you’ve rejected all other avenues to stopping them from being fired your way.
Annie,
Now that he’s got to the Nazis, let eee be. His answer to your accurate description of the massacre of innocents in Gaza is to haul out the trump card. He has now answer.
Avi and Citizen,
At the risk of tangling with you guys further, can you prove your point that Cast Lead had nothing whatsoever, and I mean nothing whatsoever, with self-defense? Can you show a reference? I mean, had there never been a Qassam missile, and if Gaza was quiet after the Disengagement, are you saying that Cast Lead would have happened anyway? Can you show me something that would suggest that?
Cast Lead was brutal and thuggish, with the ultimate goal of making the Gazan population suffer so much that Gazan family members and acquaintances would pressure the rocket launching men to refrain from attacking. Now killing 1400 people for that is sick, illegal, and backfired, but it still linked to stopping the Qassam launches. Do you have anything like evidence to show otherwise?
What was that quote again from Golda Meir about feeling oh so bad that the Arabs “make us kill their children” or something like that?
I guess no Zionist leopard ever does change its spots.
There’s a lot of ground to cover Robert.
Let’s begin with the so called “Disengagement” shall we? The one and only comprehensive scholarly history of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories “Lords of the Land”, by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, describes it as such:
“After Israel withdrew it’s forces from Gaza, in August 2005, the ruined territory was not released for even a single day from Israel’s military grip, or from the price of the occupation that the inhabitants pay every day. Israel left behind scotched earth, devastated services, and people with nearly a present or a future. The Jewish settlements were destroyed in an ungenerous move by an unenlightened occupier, which in fact continues to control the territory and kill and harass it’s inhabitants, by means of it’s formidable military might.”
Sharon’s adviser, Dov Weislgass, revealed that Sharon’s plan was to suspend the peace process in formaldehyde and put the Gazan’s on a diet.
That doesn’t even include the fact that in the space of 10 months alone, Israel fired 7,700 shells into Gaza. Yes, that’s right Robert. Israel fired as many shells in 12 months as all the mortars and rockets Hamas has ever fired at Israel since 2000. Since September 2005, the total shells Israel has fired is around 16,000.
Are you still sticking to your theory of self defense?
Let’s move on to 2006, when Hamas won the election. It was at that point that Israel imposed it’s blockade on Gaza.
In February, 2006, Khaled Mashaal said: “(Hamas) cannot oppose the
unified Arab stance expressed in the resolution passed by the Arab
League summit. That resolution, approved in Beirut, speaks of
recognizing Israel and normalizing relations with it in exchange for a
full withdrawal and a solution to the refugee problem”. Israel has rejected the peace initiative from the Arab League.
After Hamas won the election, they continued to observe the unilateral
ceasefire until Israel, responding to rocket fire from the small
parties (not Hamas) attacked Gaza in June 2006 killing 220 civilians.
In 2006, Israel kidnapped 2 Palestinian brothers from Gaza city. They’ve never been seen or heard of since. The day after, Shalit was captured as a reprisal, and Israel used that episode to launch an assault on Gaza, where they captures and imprisoned hundreds of Hamas lawmakers, and killed about 600 Palestinians.
Sound like self defense to you?
In 2006, Prime Minister Haniyeh of Hamas wrote to Pres. George Bush
offering a 20 year ceasefire with Israel during which there could be
an exchange of ambassadors, in other words, official recognition of
Israel.
Israel rejected the offer of the 20 year ceasefire, with Tzipi Lvni explaining that a long ceasefire with Hamas was not in Israel’s strategic interests.
In early 2006 in Gaza, Hamas (and the small parties who were
shooting the Qassam rockets –Islamic Jihad, PFLP, DFLP and Al Aqsa’s
Martyrs’ Brigade), agreed to participate in a workshop and large march
under the banner: Two Peoples, Two States, One Peace. (The
Fatah-Hamas conflict prevented the workshop and march from being
held.)
In 2007, Israel ordered Abbas to cancel unity talks scheduled to take place between Fatah and Hamas, and ordered Fatah to launch a coup against Hamas to overthrow them. This led to a civil war.
On June `8, 2008, Israel and Hamas agreed upon a ceasefire. Hamas
thereafter prevented the small parties in Gaza from launching Qassam
rockets into Israel, although a few groups or individuals evaded the
Hamas checkpoints to launch occasional rockets. Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in a report that Hamas had been “very careful to observe the ceasefire”.
In November 4, 2008, the ceasefire ended when Israel attacked inside
Gaza to destroy a tunnel that went into Israel. The small parties then
began shooting rockets into Israel again.
December 2008, Hamas proposed a return to the ceasefire as per the June 2008 agreement. Israel rejected the offer.
Do states that are concerned with self defense reject ceasefire agreements Robert?
Now explain to me how Israel’s self defense fits into this picture.
Let me add to this Robert.
Moshe Dayan, the Israeli defense minister at the time of the 1967 war, stated in an interview not published until 1997 that Israeli policy on the Syrian border between 1949 and 1967 consisted of “snatching bits of territory and holding on to it until the enemy despairs and gives it to us.” About events on the Israeli-Syrian border he said:
“After all, I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let’s talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was. I did that, and Laskov and Czera did that, and Yitzhak did that, but it seemed to me that the person who most enjoyed these games was Dado. We thought that we could change the lines of the ceasefire accords by military actions that were less than war. That is, to seize some territory and hold it until the enemy despairs and gives it to us.”
Historian and Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren admitted that “There is an element of truth to Dayan’s claim”, though he considers the ceasefire violations justified as “Israel regarded the de-militarized zones in the north as part of their sovereign territory”
link to en.wikipedia.org
“If Nasser had not been stupid enough to give us a pretext to go to war, we would have created one within a year or 18 months.”
[General Chaim Herzog, a founding father of Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence. (He went on to become Israel’s ambassador to the UN and eventually the state’s president).]
So in answer to your question, the answer (based on Israeli’s record) is a resounding yes. If there never been a Qassam missile, and if Gaza was quiet after the Disengagement, Israel would have found a way to create a pretext to unleash Cast Lead.
Anyone who refuses to recognized this is a fool or a propagandist.
Yeah, Shingle has this theory that if an Army plans a war in advance, it cannot possibly be said to be reacting to something. It’s like the right thing for Israel to do would have been to withdraw from Gaza and assume everything was going to be hunky-dory. So he keeps repeating this line about how the war was planned six months in advance. As if it proves anything. And he continues to repeat the November 4, 2008 myth, as if that attack had no basis either. But then again, Shingle can relied on to believe anything and everything Hamas spokesmen say.
It’s not the planning that’s the problem hophmi, it’s choosing to execute the war when there are peaceful options available. It was repeated over and over and over again that the Gaza Massacre was intended to stop rocket fire. But the cease fire of late 2008 achieved this despite Israel’s refusal to adhere to the agreed terms and end the siege of Gaza. So obviously rockets weren’t the issue, and it was instead about trying to re-establishing deterrence capability and wanting to be able to continue the collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza.
Of course not Hophmi, but when an Army plans a war in advance and then launches an attack, it’s not a reaction.
It might have been, but expecting everything was going to be hunky-dory after you fire 7,700 shells into Gaza as you withdraw is a little naive.
No it’s not a myth, the attack on November 4 did rake place. Do you need a link to the report?
And no there was no basis for this attack. If there was any possibility that the tunnel was going to be used to kidnap anyone, the fact that Israel knew it was there means there was never any threat.
If we are to believe the Israel BS about this tunnel, you’d also have to believe that it was more convenient to conduct a commando raid than to simply move IDF troops out of harms way.
Shingo,
In the case of the Golan Heights and Egypt, there was something specific, namely land, to be gained by Israel’s setting up a pretext for attacking. What was to be gained on a strategic basis, by Operation Cast Lead, other than stopping missiles?
The Israeli explanation for this is that they were destroying Hamas infrastructure, and thoroughly terrorizing the people. But what is to be gained other than stopping Qassam missiles?
Restoration of Israel’s “deterrence capability” which it lost after the Lebanon fiasco in 2006. I quoted a Haartez article below reporting an IDF spokesmen saying in Jan ’09 this had been acheived, which I would dispute.
Robert,
Hamas has no infrastructure, apart from a tunnel netwosk that remains to this day.
As has been explained to you, is Israel were concerned with ending Qassam rockets (not missiles), they could have accept the return to ceasefire proposal of December, which would have ended rocket atatcks immediately.
Israel chose to prolong the conflict and subject Ashkelon and Sederot to rocket atatcks for 3 more weeks, hence proving that ending the rocket attacks was not the priority.
As for what Israel’s agneda was, there are numerous theories.
1. Than Bronner wrote in the New York Times that: “Israel’s military operation in Gaza is aimed primarily at forcing Hamas to end its rocket barrages and military buildup. But it has another goal as well: to expunge the ghost of its flawed 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and re-establish Israeli deterrence. ”
link to nytimes.com
2. Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky argue that apart from re-establishing the deterrence capactity they thought they’d lost in 2006, Israel were also dstroying the peace offensive by Hamas, who were beginning to look moderate due to their adherence to the ceasefire. Israel want to avoid at all costs, the possibilyt of having to negotiate with Hamas.
3. The attack coincided with the Israeli elections. Kadima was trailing badly in the polls and benefitted from the conflict, though not enough to achieve victory. Chomsky points out that”:
“The timing of the invasion was presumably influenced by the coming Israeli election. Ehud Barak, who was lagging badly in the polls, gained one parliamentary seat for every 40 Arabs killed in the early days of the slaughter, Israeli commentator Ran HaCohen calculated.”
The last Lebanon war was a real shocker to the Israeli army: one hell of a lot of casualties and no victory. I’ve heard Gaza was a way for Israel to try out a different approach. It worked – very few casualties and what appeared to be a victory. Next Lebanon war will attempt to duplicate the Gaza war approach. I’d hate to be a Lebanese civilian.
Unfortunately for the Israelis, there’s a new kid on the block–Turkey–who is forging new alliances with the Syrians and Lebanese as we speak. Turkey is a far more critical ally for the US and the EU than Israel will ever be. The Turks are tough hombres, very popular in Arab countries, and may be unwilling to stand by and see Lebanon savaged again. Turkey has 15 times the population of Israel and the second largest army in NATO (the US being #1). Whose side would the US be on? Go with Israel and we lose Incirlik Air Base (maybe to the Chinese), lose a major Nato ally and push Turkey into an alliance with Iran. Bad move.
Israel’s options are gettting thinner and thinner. Someday the US will wake up and say the price of this “friendship” is too high.
The only reason there were very few casualties, is becasue Hamas were completely defenseless and unarmed. Gaza is a prison surrounded on all sides by Israel.
Lebanon is a different case altogether.
Not to mention that Hebollah are far better euqipped, trained and orgnized that Hamas.
If the next Lebanon war will attempt to duplicate the Gaza war approach, then Israel will face another humiliation.
If you lose a fight to a local tough guy, picking on his baby brother and beating him doesn”t mean you’ll fare better the next time you face big brother.
Robert, I think you’re asking the wrong question of Avi and Citizen. Their conclusion, which I share, by the way, is an inference drawn from facts, but there is no smoking gun, that is, no admission by any Israeli leader that self-defense had nothing to do with it. I think the better question is whether Israel had the right to launch any attack, even one that was much cleaner and less destructive than the one they did launch.
My answer to this question is no, for several reasons. First, Israeli precipitated the hostilities by imposing a suffocating siege on Gaza that was breathtaking in its cruelty. They can hardly act like that toward another people and then complain when there is a violent response (even a violent response that I myself do not condone.) Second, Israel had protected its citizens by entering into a cease fire which held for about four or five months in 2008 until Israel broke it on Nov. 4. Israel actually had been reneging on its obligations to ease the siege, but it conducted a military operation that date that killed about a half-dozen men. Even then, Hamas offered to resume the cease fire a month later, and Israel refused, preferring to bomb and invade.
So the answer is that Israel had peaceful alternatives to protect its citizens from harm, and it preferred to use shock and awe violence. Would they have acted that way without the rockets? Who can know for certain? I suspect they would have used some other pretext. The bigger point is that the rockets did not entitle Israel to attack at all, much less attack with such brutality.
Another factor: Israel’s assault on Gaza was pretty much on the same scale as its assault on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, and that one was not precipitated by rocket fire (though some have tried to rewrite that history), but by the border raid by Hezbollah in which several Israeli soldiers were killed and/or captured. The fact is, when Israel plans an assault like this, it waits for a pretext and is always able to find one. The grand-daddy of this strategy is the 1982 invasion of Lebanon based on the shooting of their Ambassador in London, leading to a death toll that dwarfed the combined total of the recent incursions into Lebanon and Gaza.
In fact, while Shingo mentioned some other historical events, he barely scratched the surface of Israel’s long history of intentional attacks on civilians, including Qibya in 1953, southern Syria and Lebanon in 1972, Lebanon in 1978, 1993 and 1996. It has been standard operating procedure from Day 1 (and even before, as in Deir Yassin). Given this history, it is unreasonable to extend any benefit of any doubt to Israel.
The bottom line is that Israel could have protected its civilians from the Gaza rockets by acting peacefully and reasonably, but chose not to do so. They probably thought: what is the point of having such an overwhelming superiority in military might if you don’t use it?
That’s precisely the problem Dave. The paradox is that Israel wants more and more weaponry to satisafy their security needs, but that massive arsenal makes them arrogant and foolhardy and makes them believe they are invincible.
The US has a similar psyche. It vascilates between feeling all powerful and feeling perrenially vulnerable. The interesting thing is that less militarized societies exhibit no evidence of his psychosis.
In any case, because of their military superiority, Israel (like the US) is prone to choosing military options over diplomatic ones. In fact, it goes beyind that. It goes looking for conflicts, or creates them to maintain it’s sense of idnctity and superiority.
Robert ~ as David writes there is no smoking gun that definitively proves Israel’s intentions WRT Gaza, but there are documented patterns of behaviour and insights to be had from the IDF’s own spokespersons. From Haaretz, January 08, 2009:
A senior officer admitted Tuesday that the army’s secondary objective was to restore the serious blow dealt to its self confidence after the 2006 loss of the Second Lebanon War. This has already been restored, he said.
ANALYSIS / Israel’s three alternatives for the future of the Gaza war
An analysis of who breaks cease fires and lulls, using B’Tselem data from 2000 to 2008:
Thus the latest ceasefire ended when Israel first killed Palestinians, and Palestinians then fired rockets into Israel. However, before attempting to glean lessons from this event, we need to know if this case is atypical, or if it reflects a systematic pattern.
We decided to tally the data to find out. We analyzed the entire timeline of killings of Palestinians by Israelis, and killings of Israelis by Palestinians, in the Second Intifada, based on the data from the widely-respected Israeli Human Rights group B’Tselem (including all the data from September 2000 to October 2008).
We defined “conflict pauses” as periods of one or more days when no one is killed on either side, and we asked which side kills first after conflict pauses of different durations. As shown in Figure 2, this analysis shows that it is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict: 79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day). In addition, we found that this pattern — in which Israel is more likely than Palestine to kill first after a conflict pause — becomes more pronounced for longer conflict pauses. Indeed, of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%, and it unilaterally interrupted 100% of the 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days.
Reigniting Violence: How Do Ceasefires End?’
Something else that I don’t think has been mentioned – the large numbers of Palestinians killed in Gaza between Disengagement (August 2005) and the beginning of Operation Cast Lead in December 2008. This is the period commonly described as “we withdrew from Gaza and got rockets”. Actually, more than 1,200 Gazans were killed in this three year period (stats from B’Tselem):
Sept-Dec 2005: 36 killed
2006: 526 killed
2007: 295 killed
Jan- Dec 26, 2008: 414
———–
total : 1271
Thank you Sumud,
Excellent work. This puts the issue to bed once and for all – to all but the most hardened Hasbarat.
I would add, that the closest thing to a “smoking gun” to reveal the true intent of Cast Lead is contained in the article by Uri Blau and Yotam Feldman in Haaretz about the military planning for Cast Lead.
The very first Israeli attack that began Operation Cast Lead was the attack on the Gaza police cadets’ graduation ceremony. As can be deduced from the article this attack was planned months in advance, during a time when the ceasefire was in effect and being scrupulously honored by Hamas. Logically, such a ceremony would not have taken place during a full-scale attack by Israel, so it could only be an operationally valid plan if Israel had, in these months during the ceasefire, already intended to attack Gaza on that very same date. Therefore it was not a “response” to anything that occurred later, nor an act of self-defense. It was a premeditated attack, planned well in advance of the ending of the ceasefire, which Israel first broke and then refused to extend.
In contrast, I don’t think you proved anything in speaking of the politics really solely.
Your summary of the politics sounds true (I’m not looking at every detail), but what David Samel is describing is really that Hamas had justification/responsibility? to shell, not that Israel did not have justification/responsibility to respond, to vainly attempt to stop the shelling.
I think Robert’s inquiry is “how can we stop the shelling of Sderot, AND how can we stop harms to Gazans?”
The assertion “Israel did not strike in any element of self-defense” is an entirely different question.
The difference between faux-justice (attempted punishment as resistance, “justice for us”/not them) and justice/peace (reconciliation based on mutual humanization and human rights).
Israel had a responsibility to attempt to stop the rocket fire on its civilians. Its more than a “right” or “justification”. It is a very very good question as what is the best means to accomplish that.
What is the goal is a critical question to ask, as it creates how one speaks of the history and of the “other”.
What you think is of no relevance to the rest of us Witty. What you think is detached from reality.
No that’s not what David Samel is saying and you know it. what he is saying is that Hamas proposed a return to the ceasefire, and Israel rejected the offer, which proves that Israel were not concerned with stopping he shelling.
No, Robert’s inquiry is why is the Israeli government prepared to allow Sderot to be the human shield for Israeli propaganda.
Isel violated that responsibility when it broke the ceasefire in November and then rejected the return to ceasefire in December.
>> Israel had a responsibility to attempt to stop the rocket fire on its civilians. Its more than a “right” or “justification”. It is a very very good question as what is the best means to accomplish that.
So where is your assertion that Israel should have “humanized ‘the Other’”, made “better wheels” and avoided maximalism and destabilization, you Zio-supremacist hypocrite? Oh, right, I forgot – that only applies to Palestinians.
Did Israel reject a return to the cease-fire?
I understood that they were willing, actually waiting for Hamas to do unilaterally.
no , they rejected. they planned the war for 6 months nothing was going to stop them.
“Nothing was going to stop them”.
I don’t predict the future.
What would have stopped them was the absence of any aggression, or any pretense of aggression from Hamas or factions.
November 4 is interpretable as:
1. A rational and accurate decision on the part of the IDF, in anticipation of a Hamas violation of the cease-fire
2. A tactical miscalculation by Israel that was suspected as a Hamas violation of the cease-fire, but didn’t turn out to be
3. A planned provocation
My estimation is 2. That still contains bad judgement, absence of communication to restore calm, and allows for opportunists to escalate beyond the rules of engagement that Barak authorized.
Yes Witty, you’ve had this explained to you countless times and playing dumb isn’t convincing anyone.
MIDEAST: Israel Rejected Hamas Ceasefire Offer in December
link to ipsnews.net
No, your lying, you know that’s not the case. The Hamas proposal wad to return to the original ceasefire agreement. Such a ceasefire cannot be unilateral.
November 4 is interpretable as:
Derranged logic. It justifies breaking a ceasefire in anticipation of Hams perhaps, maybe breaking a ceasefire. That’s like killing a woman who you think will react violently in case you rape her.
This is the IDF incompetece defense, in whcih case, they shoudl be disarmed as they are clearly a danger to others.
Clearly the only likely scenario.
So you agree that teh IDF is a dangerous and incompetent organization.
Do you advocate disarming them? If not, then you are an accomplice to their crimes.
Same story in 1956 in collusion with the French and Brits. Same story in 1948. By early fall of 1948, the Arab “armies” were whipped and they knew it. Israel used several cease fires to gain more territory and only settled for the final 1949 cease fires when the UN and the rest of the world had totally lost patience with them. The 1947-48 wars were really never in doubt once the Brits left and the Israelis could bring in armament. Same in 1967–nothing defensive about it. The CIA predicted an Israeli rout in 7 days; it took six.
The goal for the hard core Zionists from day one has been Eretz Israel from the Jordan to the sea and more if they can get and keep it (e.g. Sinai, Golan). Any means to achieve that were and are justifiable: ethnic cleansing, shooting POWs, settlements, bombing of civilians, collective punishment, you name it. The goal was and remains: seize as much land was as few Arabs as possible. These are the Jerusalem hard core Jews; singleminded who will stop at nothing. The only thing nice about them is their PR skills. The Tel Aviv Jews are a different story; more cultured, more progressive, who would probably like to see a one sided two state solution. Nice folks maybe, but not in power and no chance they will ever get back in power. Probably were never really in power in any case.
It is easy to fall into the illusion that Israel is this sort of middle class democracy fighting for its survival among the Arab hordes and that their excesses are forced on them by their enemies. That’s never been the case. Its always been a hard core Zionist show that focuses on one goal: all the land and no Arabs. The brutality in the 48-49 war, the ethnic cleansing in 48 and 67, the brutality in Lebanon, two times, then Gaza, the brutality of the settlers, the flotilla, etc. are all consistent behavior in support of the overall hard core Zionist goal: all the land and no Arabs. Tel Aviv Israel may try to convince you otherwise, but Jerusalem Israel is the real deal. It ain’t no joke and it ain’t no accident.
The 1967 USS Liberty incident? Give me a break. The Israelis didn’t want it snooping on them so they went after it knowing that Johnson was up to his neck in Vietnam and facing a tough election in 68. They knew that between those facts and the lobby’s influence it was unlikely Johnson would do much. They were right. It was the first big test of who was boss and we flunked. Its been down hill ever since.
So, any bets on when Pollard gets released? I say before the end of this year. I can see it know – a ticker tape parade down Main Street Jerusalem.
Now there’s a worthy cause.
Robert,
You’re really in the thick of it here, aren’t you? However, your tagline It shows that the Israeli leadership is distracted from straightforward, logical solutions to security problems and is pursuing interests other than the issue at hand captures what is happening.
Here’s a BBC youtube about those Sderot rockets before Israel broke the ceasefire on election night, Nov. 4, 2008, in which Mark Regev admits that any rockets fired during the cease-fire were not by Hamas – you think anyone knows this?
link to youtube.com
Hamas still wanted to keep the cease-fire in place after Israel killed the six on Nov 4th. Israel, however, said no. And the reason? The siege of Gaza was planned for months before the cease-fire was put in place in June 2008. (Evidence galore at Haaretz)
But what was the damage done to Sderot pre-Gaza War? From The Israel Project. Take a look. Click on the pages and compare this with the damage done to Gaza in retaliation. No different than what the US has done for 9/11. Overdone. Cruel. And unnecessary.
link to theisraelproject.org
Robert,
Hamas recently admitted that most of the people killed in Cast Lead were militants:
link to frontpagemag.com
The way evidence is accepted and analyzed on this site is something like the following. It is clear that Nixon was an antiesmite from transcripts released. He was the President of the US, therefore, the US is antisemitic in its mindset.
In the case of Israel it works this way. Take an unsubstantiated quote from an obscure source by one Israeli close to power, deduce from that what the plans and mind set of all Israeli leaders is or was. Ignore any quotes saying the exact opposite even though they outnumber the quote you chose 100 to 1.
Bull. Shit. And even if that wasn’t false, even if Hamas did say any of this Goering-style MEMRI/CAMERA hate propaganda which you post over (and over and over and over and over…), you’re really going to convince us that babies and grandmothers and farmers and doctors and police officers all qualify as militants?
You know, I didn’t understand how monsters like Nazis were even humanly possible. I knew they existed, I just couldn’t fathom that sort of vile hatred and denial was possible in any mind that was sane enough to hold a gun straight, fly a plane or really, even tie one’s shoes because I believed in my naivete that this sort of inhumanity would have to render any human being incapable of even superficially rational discourse and behavior.
Thanks for proving that wrong, Israeli.
eee – reading comprehension difficulties, or are you deliberately disseminating propaganda?
I guess since the article is written by Alan Dershowitz, and you add your own lie, it’s the latter. It only took 1 minute to see that Dershowitz is misrepresenting the statement by inferring that all members of Hamas are combatants – when they obviously are not. Neither the FrontPage reprint of the Dersh article, or the original which appeared at Hudson New York link back to Fathi Hamad’s (Hamas’ Interior Minister) interview in Al-Hayat. This is classic Dersh: strip context. No matter, there’s enough material quoted and I’ll be generous and presume the translation (the original was in Arabic, I hope it’s not a MEMRI translation) and quote is textually accurate. This is the translation of Hamad that Dershowitz quotes:
It has been said that the people were harmed by the war, but is Hamas not part of the people? It is a fact that on the first day of the war Israel struck police headquarters and killed 250 members of Hamas and the various factions, in addition to the 200-300 operatives from the [Izz al-Din] al-Qassam Brigades. In addition, 150 security personnel were killed, and the rest were from people.
Hamas has three wings – the social/political organisations, and the militant wing, the Al Qassam Brigades. My government distinguishes between them, designating only the Al Qassam Brigades as a terrorist organisation. Many countries do not designate Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
Back to Hamad. He specifically states 200-300 of the Al Qassam brigade were killed. The 255 Gaza policemen (“and other factions”) may have been employed by Hamas but that doesn’t mean they were militants. Likewise for the 150 security personnel, paid by Hamas (they may or may not be members), killed.
Dershowitz rationale is that anybody who is either a member of, or on the payroll of Hamas is a combatant – obviously nonsense.
And then there is you own little lie (an homage to Dersh? Polishing the turd?). Adding up the numbers, Hamad says 600-700 people associated with Hamas were killed. B’Tselem estimate casualties at 1385, PCHR at 1417. Six to seven hundred people is not “most of the people killed in Cast Lead were militants” as you said. At best, you could accurately say, based on Hamad’s statement: “as many as half those killed in Cast Lead were associated with Hamas, 200-300 of them militants”.
I have to ask eee, what the hell do you hope to achieve by quoting liars and adding lies yourself?
Great show of creative accounting. Policemen with guns are not militants. Why, who would think they would ever shoot at Israelis. They only give parking tickets, so Israelis have to be careful where they put their tanks. But of course they have the right to shoot at Israelis because we are occupiers, but we cannot shoot them even though they are armed. Same goes for the 150 security personnel. Do you really think Israelis are complete idiots?
eee, if it was legitimate for Israel to target hundreds of Gaza police officers for death because they would take up arms against the IDF in the event of an invasion, then:
It also would be legitimate for Hamas to kill any Israeli civilian with access to arms (most if not all of them), because they would take up those arms to defend Israel in the case of invasion.
These police officers were not targeted because they were involved in shooting rockets into Israel. It is perfectly legitimate to plan to defend oneself and one’s people against the threat of foreign invasion.
I guess you don’t like it when people show you to be a liar eee. Too bad for you. Fathi Hamad stated 200-300 Al Qassam were killed, and Dershowitz (and you) claim he said 700. He did not.
What evidence do you have that Gaza policeman and security forces are really Hamas militants? Show it. A population of 1.5 million does require law-and-order forces you know.
Unlike you I’m not prone to racist generalisations. There are Israeli idiots though, of course.
So is every Israeli who owns a gun a combatant?
David,
If Hamas are able to determine which Israeli citizens have access to arms (it is actually a small percentage of the population, it is not easy to get a gun permit in Israel) they should go ahead and attack them with accurate missiles. Israel attacked a concentration of Hamas “policemen” and was therefore completely justified. Use a little common sense. Do you not understand that by your thinking Hamas could grant immunity to all its arm bearing members by calling them “policemen” or “security personnel”? Your argument again falls into the realm of thinking Israelis are idiots. Please start thinking about the practical consequences of the arguments you advance.
Common sense tells me that when you drop a bomb on dozens of men standing around at a graduation ceremony surrounded by their family and friends, that doesn’t just make you a cold blooded murderer, that makes you coward and a butcher as well.
Your stupidity knows no bounds.
1. If you want Hamas to gave accurate missiles then lobby the Knesset to lift the blockade of Gaza and compel Congress to send accurate missiles to them.
2. Israel does have accurate missiles, but that doesn’t stop them hitting unarmed civilians, so you might want to deal with that tactic before giving advice to Hamas.
In that case, attacking Israeli civilians is also justified because mist serve or have served in the military.
You’re certainly doing your best to add weight to that theory.
Good point.
I take it ere fully supports the murder of armed settlers, seeing as they use those weapons on Palestinians.
The only Ostaelis they could possibly shoot are IDF amulets, who would have shot them long before.
I see you’re still trying to make Israelis kook like idiots.
Two ads that featured prominently for me on the site you linked: “Help Us Stop Obama’s Radical Transformation of the US!” and “DEFUND NPR.”
I think that’s really all that needs to be said. I’m sure the American Jewish audience that this blog largely speaks to can draw their own conclusions about the veracity of that web site.
One more thing.
Am I correct in assuming the underlying sentiment of this misquote is that Israel was justified in actions in Gaza? If yes, I must disagree. Whether there were 200 or 700 militants killed does not undo the massive destruction of civilian infrastructure Israel undertook in Gaza. Do you think the 180,000 chickens the IDF killed in Gaza (as recounted in the Goldstone Report) were genocidal Hamas chickens aiming kill the jews? I doubt it somehow. Goldstone, paragraph 1893 [my emphasis]:
The operations were carefully planned in all their phases. Legal opinions and advice were given throughout the planning stages and at certain operational levels during the campaign. There were almost no mistakes made according to the Government of Israel. It is in these circumstances that the Mission concludes that what occurred in just over three weeks at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.
The fact tha eee’s desperation has descended into citing sources from David Horowitz and Allan Dershowitz is a clear indication he has nowhere else to turn.
You can’t sink any lower than these liars.
eee,
The reason for this is the powerful revulsion over hasbara. There is a nauseating sense of being duped. So there is a great desire to find the real story behind the situation. Regarding the Hamas statement, there’s not much to it. It brought the Israeli and Hamas statements into line. But hundreds of innocents were killed and the war was an atrocity.
Robert,
Yes, hundreds of innocents were killed. But Israel cannot be judged out of context. If the ratio of innocents to combatants is similar to that of wars undertaken by other Western countries, why single out Israel?
The US is the world super power and trend setter. What you do, sets the world standards. Asking Israel to be better than you does not make sense. If you want the standards changed, convince people in the US, and lead by example.
With all seriousness, are the American people being duped when they honor Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill in spite of his critical support to massive ethnic cleansing? Each side is entitled to present the evidence and how it interprets it. That is the basis of free speech and public discourse. The “nausea” is mostly sour grapes about not being able to convince others and then saying it is because the “pitch was uneven” or that the other side does not play fair.
I thought that sounded familiar.
Better still, substitute in [United States] and contextualize the victims as Native Americans. Might as well beat eee to that punch.
“I thought that sounded familiar.”
That’s OK. We knew you’d miss the point.
Let’s see. What was the ratio of European Jewish combatants to civilians killed by the Germans?
This doesn’t work, eee. It’s not just about the ethnic cleansing, it’s not making amends and becoming a democracy thereafter.
You study epistemology, or the study of truth. How we know what we know. Make sure that you use that knowledge to get the real, right answer to things. Don’t use it as a toolkit for how to view reality with a distorted prism.
The relationship with American Indians right now is fine, peaceful, stable. The wars are in the past. Israel’s wars with the Palestinians are not in the past. And worldwide understanding and recognition of Apartheid is growing every day. This is serious stuff, eee. It’s going to be unpleasant to travel in Europe. You will check into a hotel, say that you are Israeli, and the clerk will sneer at you, scream an epithet at you. It’s really time for Israel to make amends, and come out of epistemic closure.
Robert,
So what’s new, Europeans that don’t like Jews? Don’t worry, they like Israeli tourists’ money just fine.
The right solution is the two state solution. It is obvious. Do you think the Belgians that want to split their country or the Scott that want independence do not understand that? How about the peoples of former Yugoslavia or former Czechoslovakia?
As for the state of Native Americans being just fine, you are deluding yourself. They are discriminated against by having lower budget per capita. This is especially severe in health and education.
I would take you a little more seriously if you were living in Israel and would be living in the bi-national state that you propose. But what you are doing is proposing a horrendous experiment from afar, safe and sound in the knowledge that whatever the result, it will not affect you.
Robert,
By the way epistemology is basically the study of knowledge. What is truth is one of the questions the field attempts to answer.
Let’s do some very basic research. Please be sincere. Do you know that the one state solution will work? Or do you hope that the one state solution will work? See the difference?
eee,
Actually, I am planning a post on that, coming soon!
Rob
eee,
You took an anti-Israeli issue, which the fair-minded person can arrive at, into an anti-Semitic issue. The hotel clerk would not be angry because of the Shema. Not angry because of Yiddishkeit. Rather, angry because of not seeking peace when it’s offered, and extreme “deterrence” violence.
Regarding, two-state, I agree, but the smart money is coming to understand that the settler rabbis and the right wing have a hammerlock on policy. Otherwise, it would have happened already.
Regarding Native Americans, they are citizens, they can vote, they have the protection of the US Constitution. That’s all one can ask in this life. The Palestinian citizens would certainly have lower socio-economic level. That’s why a massive education program, using national service teachers, would be a good idea. Would you be unable to be friends and get along with an Arab who attended your university? Wouldn’t you have good discussions discussing epistemology?
Israel takes far more money from Europeans than it has ever given them.
Incidentally, Germany is the largest tourist destination for Israelis – so much so that many are moving to Germany. I guess once you get to see what a real democracy looks lime, it’s hard to go back to a fake one.
Robert – eee’s comment above is a textbook example of Category 3(AKA the doomsday weapon): You suck!
Jews sans frontieres: ‘How to make the case for Israel and win’
link to jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com
MRW, Shingo, Avi, Citizen,
MRW, Thanks for that. I want to give a no-BS response, because you deserve it. I wrote the piece because the non-defense of Sderot had puzzled me (and clearly Yossi Melman) as well. The title of the piece, in the form of a question, “What does it say…?” has now been well answered. And the conclusion was that the “Security establishment was pursuing interests other than those at hand” are now better understood.
I read the Norman Finkelstein piece, and understand that in operation Cast Lead, Israel was seeking a larger form of deterrence following the failures of the Second Lebanon War. The part that struck me was “Gaza is to Lebanon as the second sitting for an exam is to the first — a second chance to get it right”.
Additionally, Israel gets powerful propaganda advantages by the appearance of Hamas intransigence.
I will retract the assertion that missile defenses would have taken away the political impetus for Operation Cast Lead. Clearly, the dominant political impetus for Operation Cast Lead came from the reasons that Finkelstein sites.
Had missile defenses been constructed, the damage to Sderot would have been greatly lessened. But more than missile defense, is a new doctrine that allows conflicts (the back-and-forth of attacks) to settle down to zero and then to be left alone. In other words, the maintenance of a cease-fire. That, to me, is a proper definition of “security”. What is the meaning of “security” when Israeli attacks are used to promote counter-attacks, for the purpose of avoiding a peace agreement?
I owe you an apology. I was really unfair and unnecessarily aggressive to you. I’ll tone that down and treat you with the respect you deserve in the future.
Chaos,
there’s something I gotta tell you. Don’t take this the wrong way.
You risk getting a deliberately stupid answer from some idiot to the question you keep asking (where’s najd).
Which is perfectly fine. I think part of me still hopes that most Jewish Americans will be utterly repulsed by any other Jew saying, “Well those people deserved to lose their homes to the Jewish race.”
No I meant literally.
There are two Najds in the middle east.
Robert,
It is clear that the US did not setup a simple system to stop 9/11 type attacks because it wanted to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. Come on, you are falling into this kind of thinking.
Have you heard of Occam’s Razor? When you deviate from this principle, you need to ask yourself if your ideology is not clouding your judgement. Think about it this way, if the Lebanon 2006 war did not happen, but the situation in Gaza pre Cast Lead would have been the same, do you really believe Israel would have acted much differently? Of course not.
eee,
I do follow Occam’s Razor, which is the simplest explanation that fits all the facts. There are a lot of things about Israel’s behavior that don’t fit the observable facts. Why didn’t Israel observe the cease-fire? That ‘s the best security that there is.
Regarding Cast Lead, I don’t think that you have absorbed the degree of horror. It has been rationalized in your mind. Remember in the article, that following it superficially in the American media, I thought that it was justified. I think that you are still in that place. Spend some time reading the Breaking the Silence website, and Norman Finkelstein’s discussion. And also, see things from the Palestinian’s point of view as human beings, eee, as human beings. Imagine that it were you.
Robert,
Hamas was digging a tunnel to repeat the Gilad Shalit episode. Yet, you do not view it as breaking the cease fire. It just defies common sense. Israel had to stop such an operation. Digging such a tunnel is worse than shooting a missile.
I was ten years in the IDF and saw enough. I read what Breaking the Silence say and what Finkelstein says. Every Israeli Jew was in the IDF or had a relative in the IDF. I was not in Cast Lead but can visualize very well what went on and I talked to many Cast Lead participants. If you think there as a more “humane” way of getting deterrence, you and Phil are welcome to make aliyah and create a special army unit that will put the rest of us to shame with your abilities to not have collateral damage. But all you do is criticize from afar about things you know nothing about. Did you fight in the US armed forces?
I wish there was a way to make Hamas suffer without making the Palestinians suffer. If you have a method that works, let me know.
Imagine that you were a poor man without a job in Mexico. Isn’t he a human being? Why are you not letting him into the US? Imagine that it were you. Let’s stop with these stupid arguments.
eee allegely, according to israel hamas was digging a tunnel. there was never one iota of confirmation on this. it was merely the pretext for israel to break the ceasefire and blame it on hamas. some lame ass allegation they had a ‘source’ who allegedly claimed hamas was going to kidnap another soldier.
so just stop w/your fantasies, we are not stupid.
I wish there was a way to make Hamas suffer without making the Palestinians suffer.
evacuating women and children before a massacre would have been an effective means of doing that. big duh.
Annie,
If Israel was not attacking a tunnel, how did militants die in the Israeli attack? What exactly were they doing digging in a hole in the ground? Looking for buried treasure?
Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing illegal about that tunnel, if it ever existed or if it were even aimed in the general direction of Israel’s border, the tunnel was not an immediate threat. You can’t go into a workplace and gun down a man and his coworkers just because you think he plans to steal your car.
This is really absurd in the extreme. So digging a tunnel breaks a cease fire, but firing missiles from a helicoptor, dropping bombs by plane or shelling a coastline from off-shore doesn’t?
I’m beginning to think there is something truly pathologically insane about Israeli society, on the same scale as Nazi Germany. Seriously. Both societies maintained all sorts of grandiose (and fallacious) rationales for murdering people by the score, without a flicker, just because they didn’t like the way they looked or how they prayed.
they were probably hanging out in an underground bunker, on duty. just like fireman hang out in a fire station only it seems rational hamas would have underground facilities.. there is no evidence or statements made by gazans they were digging anything when they were attacked. the iof invaded the bunker and killed them. the entire narrative of digging and kidnapping etc was fabricated by israel, there is no reason to believe any of it unless one is inclined to believe iof spokespeople. i’m not.
Clearly you’ve given up any effort to think rationally eee. Gaza’s entire economy is based on smuggling supplies into Gaza via tunnels.
You know, the same supplies that stock that fancy shopping mall in Gaza and provide dangerous weapon making material like pasta, spices,children’s books, paper and pencils.
There are tunnels leading into Egypt too. Are they to kidnap Egyptians ere?
I wish there was a way to make Hamas suffer without making the Palestinians suffer.
Peace would be a good start, seeing as peace leads to militants losing influence.
Of course, Israel needs enemies, so that is not an option.
Correction: That’s what Israel claimed. Then again, Israel also claimed that the Mavi Marmara was filled with Al Qaeda terrorists, right before letting them all go wiithout charge.
What defies common sense is the suggestion that rather than ask the IDF soliders who were potantially at risk to move to another location, or to simply lay a trap at the tunnel entrance, Israel decided it was more convenient to launch a raid that resulted in fatalties.
Yes, the same argument was used by those defending the Iraq war when it was revealed the war was based on lies. The argument went that those who critcized the war should sign up and serve in a war they were opposed to in order to be able to criticize it.
Does the same apply to Nazi Gemrnay eee? Only those who served in the Nazi military have a right to criticize?
eee,
“Deterrence” is a clinical, analytical word that describes huge brutality. What about moving away from the concept? You seem to be in despair about how to achieve deterrence humanely! So Israel goes though contortions to be humanely brutal. What about adhering to a cease-fire? And if Sderot casualties are an issue, why not get on with missile defense? Regarding Hamas, why not have a breakthrough in understanding, which they are trying to promote? That Hamas will accept a two-state solution?
Regarding poor men in Mexico, I’m an investor and hire Mexicans all the time! I mean all the time! Your arguments really don’t go over in California, because we are a total ethnic mix. We are the living embodiment of a one-state solution. My friends are of every ethnic background.
why not have a breakthrough in understanding, which they are trying to promote? That Hamas will accept a two-state solution?
Hamas Leader to Obama: Deeds, Not Words
Robert,
I travel to Europe quite often, never encountered any problems, even though it is clear I am Israeli. So let’s put the scare tactics aside. In the opposite direction, but proves the same point, 2010 brought the most tourists to Israel, ever. You may want to think how to square that with your theory.
Was it the settler rabbi’s that stopped peace in 48, in 67 in 2000? It was the insistence on the right of return. That is the reason we do not have peace. The smart money is on the two state solution, because there are no other alternatives.
2010 brought the most tourists to Israel, ever.
source?
http://www.thestar.com/travel/article/896859–notebook-record-for-israel-tourism
Here is one:
link to jpost.com
Who’s right of return is the reason we don’t have peace? Jewish Europeans, or Palestinians? Clarify please, thanks!
Annie, I saw that about 2010 in Haaretz.
Regarding eee, Apartheid is a very serious issue, and the whole Israeli “deterrence” brutality is an issue. Right now, these issues haven’t fully penetrated the mainstream. But the existence of sites like Mondoweiss and Race for Iran are a harbinger of things to come. We choose to be nerds and study the issue to death. But little by little, the truth comes out to larger numbers of people. I can see the day when Israeli apartheid will be a huge issue on American and European campuses. There are no two ways about how we feel about apartheid.
As I noted earlier, there were two consequences of Cast Lead:
1. Israel is hated
2. There are very very few qassams being fired at Sderot
The two conclusions diverge.
I am concerned that from this stream of events, you conclude that the two-state solution is not desirable or feasible (I couldn’t tell which you were saying).
As democratic governance comes only from consent of the governed, and the vast majority of Israelis do not favor a bi-national or simple single state, that the only way that could come to be is by political struggle, mostly from external imposition.
That is a different beast than BDS to oppose persecution of Palestinian civilians. That is a revolutionary approach, and in conflict with international law (in the name of international law).
Can you pick one from the following list please?
1. Operation Cast Lead was justifiable defense
2. Operation Cast Lead was horribly excessive force in an environment of justifiable defense
3. There was no component of justifiable (or understandable) defense in Operation Cast Lead.
Which do you subscribe to?
Which do you understand that Norman Finkelstein subscribes to?
More hated since Cast Lead, but hated becaseu of attacking Lebanon in 2006
There were fewer before Israel broke the ceasfire.
The two conclusions do not diverge becasue they are mutualy exclusive.
Yes, it is a concern that the two-state solution is no longer feasible. You can blame Israel for that.
Yes Witty, all the governed, not just 78% of the governed.
A vast majority of Americans don’t want economic decline or a debt that they will neverbe able to pay, but they are poweless to stop it becasue of the government they elected.
There is nothing about creating a bi-national or simple single state that has anything to do with international law.
Robert,
Occupation is not apartheid, and it does not matter how you spin it.
I bring you facts that show that Israel is in fact being more integrated with the world and you keep repeating that in the future people will know the “truth”. What truth, that Hamas really supports a Jeffersonian democracy?
You think people will be surprised to find out that Israel fights like the US in Fallujah? You think the US congress is stupid and unpatriotic and that is why it supports Israel? The US supports Israel because the US would do what Israel does given its situation, and that is a fact.
When you have middle-aged Palestinians having living their entire life under Israel’s boot, with no vote or say in their fate, and no end is sight – it is defacto apartheid. And that’s not even getting into Israeli Palestinians who are discriminated against by a whole host of laws – and that situation is rapidly getting out of control. It’s not 1939 yet but the wheels are in motion eee. Recall the March 2010 survey of jewish Israeli schoolchildren:
• 21% think “death to arabs” is a legitimate expression (45% of religious student agree, 16% of seculars)
• 46% said no equality in law for arabs (82% of religious students agree, 36% of seculars)
• 56% said arabs shouldn’t be allowed to vote (82% or religious students agree, 47% of seculars)
If you want to talk about religious extremists, Israel is the place to be. The whole country is going Kahanist.
RW,
At first I was at 1., after reading and learning more, I am coming to 3. I believe that Norman Finkelstein believes 3.
I think that regarding Qassams, it’s only loosely related to Israel’s actions and Cast Lead, and could be ramped up again, if they wished. So Israel’s actions are brutal, and cause a severe black eye to Israel, and get uneven results. Meanwhile, Israel violates cease-fires that are better than missile defense, and better that deterrence through violent reprisal.
I think you are jumping off the bridge of rationality by concluding 3, Robert.
The Qassams are meant as communication, as well as actual threat. As a communication, they state “we do not believe that your civilians have the right to live in safety”. Those that interpret that communication rosily add “so long as Gazans are oppressed”.
But, Israelis conceive that that communication is independant of how Gazans are treated, that the existence of Israel itself as a self-determining state of Jews is the message, the target.
One has to ask why Israel reconciled with Fatah even as they harbored and incorporated many of the former Al Aqsa Martyrs into their legal police force (Al Aqsa Martyrs killed more Israelis during the second intifada than Hamas, though many claim that Hamas trained and armed many Al Aqsa Martyrs cadre).
The difference that I see is that Al Aqsa Martyrs surrendered their arms to the PA, and under unified central control. In contrast, Hamas encouraged Qassam resistance in Gaza and hoping for similar in the West Bank, never put down their arms.
Secondly, Israel responds to triangulation (as well as employs it). That is that Israel determined to prefer the PA to Hamas, to invest in PA’s approach to governance and institution development, that could be construed as between neutral and later favorable to Israel, versus Hamas’ which can only be construed as neutral to ruthlessly aggressive (especially if armed by Iran and other larger powers than can shoot Qassams).
While you may think that you are only asserting a position on the appearance of Israeli brutality, that fits within a context of mutual brutality, including brutality between Hamas and Fatah.
In picking option three, rather than option two as representative, you are inadvertently allying with Hamas, as is Norman inadvertently.
Hamas communicates by shelling civilians that it does not currently intend peace, as Israel communicates that it does not currently intend peace by similar actions in Gaza and the West Bank.
I believe that BOTH Hamas and Israel got what they wanted in Cast Lead.
Although Shingo doesn’t believe that Hamas first shelled empty desert, then Sderot, then Ashkelon, then Ashdod, before Israel launched its air and then ground attack, it is accurate.
And, from that sequence, I concluded and conclude that Hamas desired that Israel respond, insisted in fact, in the spirit of “the purpose of civil disobedience is to evoke an exagerated response”.
The difference between Hamas doing that and Gandhi or ML King, was that the Hamas actions were violent, terrorizing on civilians in fact (war crimes per the Goldstone report), and those that bore the consequences of the civil disobedience were mostly voluntary.
It is one of the advantages of non-violent resistance, that the exagerated responses contrast greatly with the stimulus, while relative to Hamas’ actions they are concave mirrors (intentionally disproportionate yes, but mirrors nevertheless).
Yes, Witty, Hamas ceased entirely their own attacks on Israel, and even did police actions against militants (many of them Fatah-aligned) who were still firing rockets — at an averagely monthly rate of about 1.5, mind you — until Israel unilaterally broke the cease fire. Then Hamas pleaded with Israel to resume the cease fire, after which of course, Israel did the only logical thing as far as you can see: they proceeded to target and destroy every piece of civilian infrastructure (hospitals, prisons, police stations, the water treatment plant, schools) that they could identify.
This was all a clever ruse by Hamas to deprive themselves of UN aid thanks to the IDF, who of course were unable to distinguish which buildings were and weren’t UN because of course, the UN buildings were clearly marked on every official map. This culminated in Israel intentionally setting fire to tons upon tons of food and other supplies in the main UN warehouse, guaranteeing that Hamas would see their ultimate goal of seeing their own children starve in concentration-camp like conditions.
Oh yes, Witty. That makes perfect sense.
No one’s interested in what you believe Witty, becauuse whatyou believe had no basis in reality or fact. Hamas gained nothing from Cast Lead.
False Witty. Novemerb 4th was a central component of Cast Lead. Cast Lead already existed. It was not created after November 4th.
You can conclude whatever you like, you’re still wrong and your conclusions are ludicrous reqruign of history not supported by facts.
If it was Hamas desire for Israel to respond, tehre woudl have been no proposal to return to a ceasefire. Of course, Israel had already launched an attack, co by definition, Israel was not repornding, but continuing what they had already started.
More of your signatureincoherent, convoluted garbage Witty.
The difference between Hamas and Israel is that Israel broke a 6 months ceasefire and deliberately started a war, which was entirely voluntary. Whatever terrorizing on civilian and war crimes you want to selectively attribute to Hamas, applies by an order of magnitude greater to Israel.
The exagerated responses contrasted just as greatly with the stimulus in this instance, seeing as the stimulus was completely manufacured by Israel when they chose to violate the ceasefire and then reject the offer to return to the ceasefire.
Do you really believe your metaphors and broken sentences are fooling or impressing anyone Witty?
Well done Chaos. You accomplished an amzing feat. You took a typically verbose and incoherent post from Witty and distilled it down to a few conerent sentences and exposed how Witty’s vile and decaying mind works.
Many thanks.
Nice backflip Witty. The first comment on this thread, from you, states that the Qassams were terrorizing but not a threat.
If you’re going to lie, then you need to have a good memory.
You are seriously out of our mind Witty. This is the core of Israel’s foreign policy.
Israel argued desperately for for Russia to stop the sale of S-300 anti aircraft missiles (which are purely defensive) because it wants the option of being able to attack Iran without concern.
Israel’s insistence that arms be kept from Hamas, while helping itself to more miliary hadward than it knows what to do with is entirely based on the premise that Palestinians not be allowed to live in safety.
Your hypocrisy and promitive tribalism is nauseating andmind boggling.
this is simply more of your made up rhetoric fluff. No basis in fact, no evidence, just you Witty the magnificent (who hasn;t been to Israle in morethan 20 years) , deciding on balf of Israelis what they feel and how they see the world.
One does not need to ask this as it is answered by the articel in Vanity Fair (The Gaza Bombshell) and recent Wikileaks cables that explain that Fatah has become an instrument of Israel.
The difference is that that Fatah has become utterly corrupted and given up any pretense of representing the best interests of Palestinians.
In contrast, Hamas refuses to sell out to Israel. Israel’s own reports confirm that Hamas not only observed the ceasefire ith great care, but stifled “Qassam resistance in Gaza”. In fact, Hamas has declared those firign rocekts to be rebels and bandits.
Secondly, Israel responds to triangulation (as well as employs it).
That is that Israel determined to prefer the PA to Hamas, to invest in PA’s approach to governance and institution development
No Witty, one is alluying with the evidence and the facts, not your bloaviating incoherent diatribes and derranged conclusions.
False. Hamas communicated by observing the ceasefire and propsing a return to it. Israel communicated bybreakign the ceasefire and carryign out a massacre on Palestinians.
If you’d bothered to read the goltone Report, you’d know that.
Israel, in the West Bank, or OPT, has Apartheid functionality. The political mechanics in the West Bank are similar to apartheid, and utterly cruel and at variance with American tradition since the 1960s. Here is a report on the OPT and apartheid, from South Africa–>
link to hsrc.ac.za .
Take some time to leaf through the Executive Summary.
The US would not do what Israel does in the same situation. The US extends voting rights. The US has tough laws against discrimination, racism and hate speech, and a real taboo that shows up in classrooms and general behavior.
You didnt answer me, eee, if you had an Arab university buddy who studied epistemology, whether you would have a good conversation with him and become his friend. Do you have Arab friends? If not, think about biting the bullet and start making Arab friends. Go to Jaffa, East Jerusalem, or Nazareth, and get to know somebody. Get to know a lot of people.
The US supports Israel because of the unreasonable power of the Israel Lobby, that puts the House of Representatives in hammerlock and, in my mind, really embarrasses the United States. After the 2004 International Court of Justice 15-0 ruling against the Wall, the House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning the court. eee, when you are condemning a court that is ruling 15-0, you are losing. It sets the US against the judgement of International Law. That. Is. Embarrassing.
Thanks for that link Robert.