Cover of Israeli Iran attack preparedness pamphlet. (Photo: Stringer/Reuters)
Weeks after passing out gas masks, the Israeli government has started distributing emergency pamphlets that use a muppet character similar to Oscar the Grouch to prepare families for an attack from Iran. Reuters lately reported on the 15-page booklet slipped into mailboxes by the Home Front Command, Israel’s emergency response service:
Israelis, the military-issued booklet says, would have only between 30 seconds and three minutes to find cover and hunker down between the time air raid sirens sound and rockets slam into their area.
…On the cover a smiling Moishe Oofnik, the Israeli muppet version of Oscar the Grouch – the resident pessimist of the U.S. children’s show Sesame Street – sticks out of the trash can he calls home.
He strikes a more pensive pose inside the booklet, resting his head on his hand under instructions on what to do when sirens wail.
Screen shot of Israel Home Front’s icon of emergency preparedness, muppet Moishe Oofnik. (Image: oref.mdigital.co.il)
The trashcan-dwelling puppet brochures on safety are a familiar and comforting learning tool to help Israelis deal with the rising tensions with Iran. In the brochure, the government tells families to discuss the possibility of war at home, but recommends not doing so if family members are upset, watching television, or eating. The subliminal message is that Iran, in it of itself, is already upsetting enough:
‘You should find the proper time to have the conversation — not during mealtime or when you are watching television. It should not be held after a family argument or when you are agitated about some other pressing matter.’
Another “lost in translation” post- the image shows preparedness for the earthquake.
Israelis, the military-issued booklet says, would have only between 30 seconds and three minutes to find cover and hunker down between the time air raid sirens sound and rockets slam into their area.
link to telegraph.co.uk
Israel has a thirty seconds warning before an earthquake? Sure. And so smart to reach for your gas mask then.
And there is this:
Helpfully, the muppet tells citizens to avoid the war chat at a time when other family issues are on their mind:
“It should not be held after a family argument or when you are agitated about some other pressing matter,” it advises.
dimadok, glad you must have found time for this, with “nothing on your mind”.
link to albawaba.com
Yeah right for all the good this fluffy-sided preparation will do.
Listen to me israelis everywhere: use your heads, use your passports – don’t trust what your government tells you.
a regular, public awareness campaign just in case israel bombs iran. hide under your bed, the russians are coming the russians are coming.
Mayhaps the green garbage can is the Israeli version of “Duck and Cover”.
“Iranian missiles incoming! Quick, everyone in the trash!”
Muppets, however, aren’t anything new. Just look at the Knesset.
“… Israelis, the military-issued booklet says, would have only between 30 seconds and three minutes to find cover and hunker down between the time air raid sirens sound and rockets slam into their area.”
The Israeli government never tells its people the truth. 30 seconds and 3 minutes of warning time is not about the time the rockets need to travel from Iran to Israel but from Lebanon to Israel. A couple of weeks back, Nasrallah that never lies, implied in a speech that if Israel starts anything, thousands of missiles would rain on the Haifa Bay petro and bio-chemical reservoirs that could kill tens of thousands and not the mere 500 being understated by the Israeli government. The Israeli military has already conceded that Hizbullah’s misiles can reach any point in Israel, which includes Dimona.
What is the worst case scenario for a massive and concentrated missile attack on Dimona? (Wondering out loud.) No doubt Dimona is encased in Iron Dome technology.
Jujitsu — one can turn an opponent’s nuclear resources against the opponent with conventional weapons.
From YNet describing how it’s not really about Iran:
Official: Hezbollah attack more dangerous than Iran missiles
In wake of ongoing debate over possible Israeli attack on Iran, security assessments indicate that biggest threat to Israel is not Islamic Republic’s missiles but rather Hezbollah’s ability to fire rockets at Israel
Attila Somflavi Published: 08.06.12, 11:07 / Israel News
The continuous debate over a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities has sparked further discussion about the major security threats Israel currently faces.
While senior security establishment officials vehemently warn against the ramifications of a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, security and government assessments indicate that the biggest threat to Israel is a deadly response from Iran’s ally Hezbollah, whose leader Hassan Nasrallah has previously warned that its missiles and rockets could strike anywhere inside the Jewish state.
‘Shahab-3 missile no cause for concern’
A government source said that “Hezbollah is the long arm of Iran,” adding that “this terrorist organization will undoubtedly barrage Israel with thousands of missiles. It won’t begin with Kiryat Shmona and end in Haifa, but will reach further into Israel. Hezbollah could cover Israel with rockets.”
According to additional assessments, Hezbollah has acquired medium-long range Scud missiles. However, IDF sources have asserted that it holds a significant list of targets which will enable the Israeli Air Force to hit long-range missile launch pads.
“In the event of a Hezbollah attack, there is no doubt that one of the first missions will be to destroy Hezbollah’s long-range missile launch pads, just as we did during the Second Lebanon War,” said an official source.
Iran has 300-400 Shahab missiles
When asked why Israel has yet to launch a preemptive strike on the targets, the source said that “a preemptive attack means instigating war. We can’t constantly be in a state of endless fighting.”
Security establishment officials estimate that Iran has between 300 and 400 Shahab-3 ground missiles that it can fire at Israel. However, if the Islamic Republic does decide to fire missiles at Israel, it would most likely not use its entire missile arsenal.
In recent years, Israel has accelerated the development of the Arrow missile defense system, designed to thwart long-range missiles in a US-backed “race” against Iran, Syria and other regional enemies, a senior Israeli defense official said on Sunday.
“The accuracy and the reach will be greater,” the official said of Arrow, which has been operational since 2000 and is designed to blow up incoming missiles at altitudes high enough for non-conventional warheads to disintegrate safely.
In parallel with Arrow II, Israel is developing Arrow III, which is due to be operational in 2014 or 2015. Unlike previous generations of the interceptor, Arrow III will engage incoming missiles in space, using detachable warheads that, turning into “kamikaze” satellites, will seek out and slam into the target.
“The recent developments indicate that Israel has the means to handle a missile attack from Iran or from the Gaza Strip. The major problem Israel currently faces is the significant missile arsenal the Hezbollah holds and its ability to fire rockets at Israel for a long period of time,” said the official source.
link to ynetnews.com
“In recent years, Israel has accelerated the development of the Arrow missile defense system, designed to thwart long-range missiles in a US-backed “race” against Iran, Syria and other regional enemies, a senior Israeli defense official said on Sunday. ”
The Israeli belief in tech goes with the belief that G-d is on their side. Bibi covers both topics every time at the UN and in congress. As long as they are inept at diplomacy , however, the tech has second order relevance. They are too smart for their own good, really.
The techy Arrow stuff may be effective to a degree against the longer distance missiles that would come Israel’s way from far away Iran (1500 miles) but would probably be ineffective against what Hizbullah would launch at TA from the Lebanese border about 86 miles away; Haifa is only 26 miles away. That should explain what the 30 seconds to 3 minutes warning is all about. Israel is more spooked about Hizbullah than it’s letting on with all this useless noise about Iran. Nasrallah is also on record on what he’d do to Israeli incoming and outgoing shipping if it ever blocked Lebanese shipping again.
From the JPost last month:
Hezbollah could blockade sea in future war
By YAAKOV KATZ
07/01/2012 20:00
IDF: Lebanese group will target cargo ships within 30-km radius of Israel to try to get them to refuse to sail there during war.
Israel is concerned that in a war with Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla group will try to blockade Israel by attacking civilian cargo ships.
Israel’s sea lines of communication span the length of the Mediterranean Sea and around the Magreb region of North Africa, with 99 percent of all goods arriving in the country by sea, including ammunition and military hardware.
Navy assessments are that Hezbollah will try to attack cargo ships within a 30-kilometer radius of Israel, in an effort to get commercial vessels to refuse to sail there during a war.
During the Second Lebanon War in July 2006, Hezbollah fired a missile at the INS Hanit corvette, killing four sailors and causing extensive damage. Another missile sunk a nearby cargo freighter.
“Hezbollah has already proven that it can fire missiles, so the operational capability exists as does the readiness to act,” a senior navy officer said.
The officer warned of the economic ramifications for Israel if Hezbollah succeeded in stopping merchant ships from sailing to the ports of Ashdod and Haifa.
“People have not internalized what it means that 99% of what we import as a country comes by sea,” he said. “Ships stopping to sail here would have economic and security ramifications and is therefore the first and primary challenge we will need to confront.”
Hezbollah is believed to have a significant arsenal of Chinese-developed anti-ship missiles such as the C-802, which is radar-guided and was used to hit the Hanit in 2006.
In addition, the navy is concerned with Syria’s recent purchase of the Russian Yakhont anti-ship missile, which could be transferred to Hezbollah. Syria already tested the Yakhont in recent maneuvers and the missile is said to have a range of about 300 km…
link to jpost.com
Always thought Bibi was a muppet.
God’s Away On Business?
link to youtube.com
“I’d sell your heart to the junkman baby
For a buck, for a buck
If you’re looking for someone
To pull you out of that ditch
You’re out of luck, you’re out of luck
The ship is sinking
The ship is sinking
The ship is sinking
There’s leak, there’s leak,
In the boiler room
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who are the ones that we kept in charge?
Killers, thieves, and lawyers”
The militarization of the Muppets …. what next?
Israel pre-emptively attacking Iran. What trashy thinking. Belongs in the garbage.
Umm, I sort of thought the Muppet characters were the property of Jim Henson? Did he license Israel to use his character or is their a copyright infringement going on? Or are The Muppets public domain?
Muppets are definitely not public domain. I think the Sesame Street Show has been licensed to different production studios around the world, which is why you have official Sesame Street shows in local languages in alot of countries like China, Palestine, Philippines, etc…Israel being one of them. The puppets are created by the Jim Henson Studios and sent out to their countries. In the case of the Palestinian Sesame Streeet, production was stopped b/c USAID cut funding post-UN bid in September 2011 and adding insult to injury, the IDF shut down the TV station and stole their cameras.
Jim Henson is rolling in his grave…
Btw, that’s a strange set of images of the Israeli soldier. Its as if they’re trying to tell me that he’s…..Zany, wacky and totally fun!!! ….and yet, he’s still a racist baby-killing mindless war machine of destruction.
I must’ve missed the series of Muppet-based pamphlets describing:
- how to use terrorism and ethnic cleansing to create an oppressive, colonialist, expansionist and supremacist “Jewish State”;
- how to maintain that supremacist state by means of a 60+ years, ON-GOING and offensive (i.e., not defensive) campaign of aggression, oppression, theft, colonization, destruction and murder;
- how to successfully be both a nuclear-armed aggressor (who repeatedly threatens to attack other nations and who engages in assassination, torture, collective punishment and wanton destruction) and a victim (who incessantly wails about being wiped off the map and pushed into the sea even as he “Remember[s] the Holocaust!”).
What does Israel have planned for the Palestinians that makes them so paranoid about an Iranian counter-attack? As time continues to slip away for Israel, the international community’s clock continues to tick as it watches as the oppression, confinement and slow genocide(yes GENOCIDE) of the Palestinians continues without any compromise from Zionism. It ticks in the context of Zionism in America and the disasterous concequences it’s particular brand of fanaticism has had on the average American. And it’s hard not to imagine that things could get very bad for Jewish communities, all over the world. Madness…
I have repeatedly sent mondoweiss information on local boycott Israel actions in our town and elsewhere in the US. You have not posted any of them.
You even blocked any mention of “Scottish artists call to boycott Israeli dance group performance at Edinburgh”
link to haaretz.com
Why?
Why do you refuse to give these kinds of news sufficient exposure? Why do you refuse to focus on news that talk about meaningful collective action to stop Israel and its crimes?
If you are hung up on a “fluffy and pink” side to Israel, wake up and smell the coffee. It does not exist. Israel is butchery and blood all the way. Nothing “fluffy and pink” about it.
Do you think by continuous bellyaching –which you do so well- about this mother of all death machines, it will go away and you will feel like normal human beings?
Well, it won’t!
Have the GUTS to shout BOYCOTT ISRAEL. Have the GUTS to demand public action to stop these lunatics from further damage to the world. Dragging your feet prolongs what you claim to oppose.
So, whose side are you on? The Israeli military destruction of life and the planet, or survival on earth?
Act to stop Israel. Boycott Israel now!
@Have the GUTS….
I’m all for holding Israel accountable for its actions but I have yet to see how preventing a dance performance by Israeli youth in Edinburgh will affect the on-going occupation. It appears less like holding Israel accountable and more like shutting down Israeli activities for the sake of shutting down Israeli activities, which believes me, does nothing to resolve the conflict other than illustrate the notion that supporters of Palestine are radical left-wing hooligans, as often embraced by rightists and even many centrists. It might be more affective to attend the event, perhaps hold a silent demonstration or protest outside, perhaps pass out informative fact sheets related to the suppression of similar cultural acts in Palestine.