"Israel Quick to Offer Aid to Quake Victims," writes The Israel Project:
Jerusalem, March 11 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly offered aid to victims of Friday’s massive earthquake in Japan and the first group of Israeli humanitarian experts was already preparing to leave for the scene.
Israel’s Ministry of Infrastructures recently ran this ad (more precisely, right after Israel’s non-response to the Carmel fires):
link to youtube.com
Loose translation:
“A strong earthquake in Israel is just a matter of time. Strengthening your building is important – but our website tells you it’s a private, not government, concern.
Earthquake – Don’t let it catch you unawares.”
Wear clean underwear…
Sacrifice to Poseidon.
recent BBC world opinion poll showed that 4%
percent of Japanese have an positive opinion of Israel.
Chu, considering just how racist and xenophobic Japanese are, it’s awfully high.
Why didn’t just go for the anti-Semitic card, toady?
So now the Japanese are xenophobic racists. Oh happy day.
not just now.
long, long time.
quite the tradition in Japan.
all you need do is ask them.
I’ll take your word for it the day hell freezes over.
What’s that saying about not publicizing your own charity?
I doubt this token offer of resistance by a nation which really does not have anything to offer is even going to register with the vast majority of Japanese. So far, the only mention of Israel and the quake I have seen on Japanese Google news is a single piece where Israel is on a long list (alongside Iran… heh!) of ‘other nations who offered assistance’.
“assistance” of course…
I guess we can expect more headlines along the lines of
The Japan Disaster: Bad for them, Good for the Jews:
I wonder how many Hasbara teams and camera crews they will bring this time around in an attempt to exploit this horrific disaster…
They’ll probably photoshop in some Israeli rescue guy surfing the tsunami and add a headline claim.
Israel has ‘humanitarian experts’ ?? LOL, send them to Gaza and Hebron first. Sounds like a tautology to me.
—Sounds like a tautology to me.—-????
I’m a simple rube, but the school marms here didn’t learn us that use of tautology
RE: “Israel Quick to Offer Aid to Quake Victims,” writes The Israel Project
MY SNARK: More baby Israels? Israel is quick to use any humanitarian disaster (excluding the Palestinians, of course) as a PR/hasbara opportunity. “Disaster capitalism”, or just disaster hasbara?
SEE: The Zionization of Disaster Relief, by Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam, 01/19/10
ENTIRE POST – link to richardsilverstein.com
P.S. Video: ‘Israel’ Born in Haiti after IDF Delivers Healthy Baby, Arutz Sheva TV, 01/17/10 – The IDF Field Hospital in Haiti has delivered its first baby, and the mother was so happy that she called him “Israel.”…
LINK – link to israelnationalnews.com
RE: “Here we come to save the day” – Weiss
Mighty Mouse Theme Song – Kazemakaze(風まかせ月影蘭) AMV [VIDEO, 01:35] – link to youtube.com
This is a classic damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t situation.
If we don’t offer help then of course we just care about ourselves, if we do- it’s a pr stunt.
just cant win. Why bother?
-I am sure they have the best intentions in mind.
Just like Haiti, only the news reports in the US were
selling the Israel efforts as a better job than the US
efforts. Don’t you recall. Weiss must have posted these
stories back then.
“Weiss must have posted these stories back then.”
Was it this one? :
link to mondoweiss.net
There were videos also. I think MSNBC talking about how Israel’s med team was soo exceptional. The woman reporting was an american jew, typical hasbara usa style.
I don’t believe just because someone is a Jew that they can’t do their job as a journalist well.
jon s, stop playing your worn out victim card. No one objects to sincere and selfless humanitarian help from anyone, including Israelis. It’s the very real possibility of exploitation of such human tragedies again by Hasbarats, that people find repulsive.
why, yes, jon, we don’t play no games of victim cards ’round here.
Are you suprised that so many people around the world are getting tired of listening to this constant Israeli whining? Don’t blame people who have become very suspicious or lost complete faith in anything Israel says or does. It’s Israeli governments and its unconditional amen corner who deserve to be criticized for creating this situation of lacking credibility in the first place.
You offer help and don’t put out press releases praising yourself.
It is a PR stunt.
As an Israeli, I’m not impressed. I know that when the earthquake hits Israel (as our Ministry of Infrastructure told us with our own tax-money – “it’s only a matter of time”), neither my government fire and rescue services nor the IDF’s Home Front Command will be able to offer me and my family any assistance.
So no one is fooled into believing the GoI cares about anything but itself, anyway.
However, I would like to know if our own little Fukushima can withstand even a smaller quake.
As I understand it, it was built with 60-year-old technology (which was only good for 30 years back then) rather surreptitiously and with no public oversight.
Or how about those hundreds of thousands of defective gas masks the government had handed out during and prior to the Gulf War, only to confess a few months later, after the war, that the masks were defective?
No, seriously!
Can we talk about our own little Fukushima’s earthquake readiness?
I’m ready…
This is a classic damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t situation.
Not at all. Israel was criticised for the Haita effort because their fabulous IDF field hospital only existed long enough (11 days) to give the US media time to file their wonder-filled stories about what an incredible contribution Israel had made. Once that mission was accomplished, they packed up and went home.
Oh, and of course starving Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Ghetto kinda makes Israel’s “humanitarian effort” in Haita seem rather cynical.
Its a good thing that Jews and Israel have risen to the needs of the day.
If one does good for less than perfect reasons, its doing good. If one does good for perfect reasons, its doing good.
Work to expand it if you are interested in what is good for Palestinians.
“Its a good thing that Jews and Israel have risen to the needs of the day.”
I doubt that Japan *needs* any assistance by Israel.
The more competent rescuers and medics on the scene, the better. Japan is not going to turn down Israel’s humanitarian relief.
a) Not necessarily. There is a level of ‘enough’.
b) I am not sure whether Israelis have skills that are not available from more nearby countries and that outweigh their need to be transported, housed, fed and accompanied by interpreters.
Generally speaking – and this is by no means restricted to Israel – ferrying “rescue teams” of highly motivated volunteers or helpers in uniform around half the globe is not the most sensible way to help out in such cases. Providing financial assistance to local efforts is usually more effective and efficient. But of course, it’s not as glamorous, which is why countries – again, not just Israel – prefer the former method.
There is of course an exception in cases when needed capabilities are simply not available locally – as was the case with Israel’s latest forest fire experience.
Work to expand it if you are interested in what is good for Palestinians.
some here aren’t much interested in the good, and are more interested in seeing divine justice for the Palestinians, just as long as the advent of divine justice extends no further.
That was nice of Israel to publically thank the Palestinians for rushing to their aid to put out those fires.
Exactly.
this is another time that the mighty Wurlitzer shot out a cool title for the post
i dont agree fuster. i thought it was banal. sorry…. but thanks!
I’m with the frog on this one, PW – plays off the “gutty little Israel fighting above its weight” mythology, but also the idea that it’s all just a cartoon for children. Give yourself some credit.
link to youtube.com
Though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn you two guys prefer the b&w version.
thanks but not convinced, ck
say what do you think of int’l law as an aspiration– or what’s a heaven for. and now and then it actually gets applied, thru a spasm of the universe. and maybe we’re all making progress…
but it’s still important that kids go around quoting the universal declaration of human rigths. and when someone in ann arbor said all the un does is prosecute israel, this lawyer there said, no the un denounces israel a lot but it never gets punished, because it owns one of the judges…
I’m with the frog on this one
of course you are.
PW – international law as something aspirational (something other than conventions of behavior between and for nation-states) has to work its way through the real existing human material before it can command a superior allegiance. To say much more on the subject requires philosophy and religion working together, and eventually calls for the saying of many impermissible things, to seem to blaspheme against the religion of humanism by invoking the higher purpose even in the worst and most (typically human) inhuman things.
say what? conventions of behavior between and for nation-states sounds kinda groovy to me.
what’s this “has to work its way through the real existing human material” crap supposed to mean?
annie, International law is a work in progress and dependent on perceived alignments with national interest. Look at the distance between the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for instance, and the actual conduct of the nations of the world. But PW, rightly, seems to want more than that. He wants “kids” to believe in it, and even, I think, to put their perceptions of the universal good, or right and wrong, ahead of particular national, ethnic, sectarian, tribal, class, etc., interests – or, ideally, to come to see those interests as harmoniously aligned, as the same, just as we would recognize each other as fellow human beings first and last. That would amount to nothing less than the unification of humanity around a shared understanding of justice. How many out of the Earth’s nearly 7 billion people – the human material – seem prepared for that, and not just in their imaginations, but in the shadow of war or economic competition? It’s the stuff of messianic prophecy. But until it comes about, to the precise extent it hasn’t come about, then international law will fall short. It only just barely functions in its primary, broadly accepted fields of operation, the ones least challenging to the sovereignty of the major powers. Where it’s seemingly most needed – where people are under the most stress and the most divided – is exactly where it is most often ignored or bypassed.
(well, maybe have to work on that )
International law is a work in progress and dependent on perceived alignments with national interest……..Where it’s seemingly most needed – where people are under the most stress and the most divided – is exactly where it is most often ignored or bypassed.
it is not ignored. it is that ‘work in progress’ israel is hoping to break down international law, adjust it through it’s crimes.
The elastic limits of law (scroll)
On a tangential note, when I was younger, I remember US financial aid to Israel was about 2/3 military and 1/3 economic. I see over the last several years, the economic aid has dwindled and now it seems all direct US dollar grants are in the form of military aid.
I wonder how that happened? Was this a US initiative? An Israeli one?
And speaking of US aid to Israel, on a surprising note, I see aid to Israel slightly decreased 15% or so in Bush’s second term, at least when measured by the $3+ billion average from the late Clinton years. It went from about $3.1 Billion in 1998 to $2.5 billion in 2007 and 2008.
Figures are from
link to wrmea.com
The aid figures from 2000 and 2003 are quite striking. Seems like Israel got an extra $1 billion those years. Not bad. One can only suppose the first was the price extracted for Clinton’s dream of peace. And the latter was related to Iraq, probably an agreement to stay out even if Saddam tried to attack them.
If Israel offers gives Japan aid, considering how much we give Israel, is it fair to think that they are just transferring US aid on to Japan?
If they can afford to aid needy countries, why are we giving them anything? And if we are giving them so much, we should not allow them to give aid to other countries. Or at least give us the credit!
Japan has asked for assistance from just four countries (New Zealand, Australia, the U.S., and Britain), although lots more (45, some report) are offering.
link to abc.net.au
link to allvoices.com
She Who Must Be Obeyed spent a good portion of yesterday trying to get through to her family in Tokyo. They are O.K. Her neice’s husband has a small demolition company, and he was doing a job in Tokyo when the local people came and complained that his bulldozer was making the whole neighbourhood shake. So now we know who to blame.
They should be saving themselves… from themselves.
Them israelis.
Great that Israel offered to help what a disaster.
Huff Po has a great list of ways to help
link to huffingtonpost.com
Just wish the Israeli’s would do the same for the Palestinians
Israel was asked by Japan to wait for a request for help, as were all countries, and Israel has not been invited. But they’re going anyway, doggone it, even if they have to do it by sneaking in through South Korea and not through any official channels. link to jpost.com