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‘Let’s go back to Gaza and give it a thorough cleaning’

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From the rightwing Israeli news service Arutz Sheva. The unspeakable headline is theirs.

Chairman Avigdor Lieberman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee said, Monday morning, that there’s no choice but to consider reconquering Gaza.

Interviewed on Kol Yisrael government radio following the launching of seven rockets at southern Israel, Sunday evening, the chairman of the Yisrael Beyteinuparty said that if Israel does not react now to the rocket fire, in two years, Hamas will have aircraft and hundreds of missiles that will reach Tel Aviv and even Netanya, to the north. The Air Force hit a number of Gaza targets following the rocket fire.

Lieberman said Hamas has no intention of accepting a Jewish presence in the land of Israel so Israel must return to Gaza and carry out a thorough cleaning.

Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.

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33 Responses

  1. Maximus Decimus Meridius on June 24, 2013, 10:28 am

    ”Lieberman said Hamas has no intention of accepting a Jewish presence in the land of Israel so Israel must return to Gaza and carry out a thorough cleaning.”

    3 points:

    1) If Israel is so surrounded by implacable enemies whose goal is the elimination of Jews, why the hell does Evet Lvovich Liebermann stay there, and not return to his native Moldova?

    2) Do the Israelis not see the utter futility of constant bombing? I thought the war in 2009 was supposed to eliminate the threat from rockets. But no, they had to have another little war last November. And now another one? Any rational person would see that there is no military solution to this, but I suppose Israel has never had any other way of communicating with Arabs except through war, so that’s all they know.

    3) The language of ‘cleansing’ is indeed hateful. Could you IMAGINE if a serious politician in any Muslim country used those words about Israel? It would be all over the front pages, and Ban Ki Moon and Obama would make statements. The sheer hatred which many Israelis feel towards the people of Gaza, and the indifference (if not outright collusion) of the outside world, is sickening.

    • Justpassingby on June 24, 2013, 12:19 pm

      Great points, yes the silence from west mainstream media is another proof how biased media are in this conflict.

      • Mayhem on June 24, 2013, 9:30 pm

        In typical fashion the authors and their band of yea-sayers have chosen to lambast a right-wing Israeli extremist as a way of distracting attention from the bigger picture.
        In fact our western media in downtown Melbourne Australia have covered the story of the rocket attacks on Israel, carried out by Islamic Jihad, who are at loggerheads with Hamas in Gaza.
        Al Age agreed with Amos Harel, military correspondent for daily newspaper Haaretz (read http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/rocket-attack-from-gaza-is-islamic-jihad-s-way-of-settling-score-with-hamas-1.531695), who suggests that the rockets fired at Israel were most likely “Islamic Jihad’s way of settling the score with Hamas.” He went further saying that neither Hamas nor Israel have an interest in escalating the situation and hence Israel “restricted its responses to an aerial attack on a weapons cache, and an Islamic Jihad command centre, while also temporarily closing border crossings.”
        Israel doesn’t want to keep making military incursions into Gaza. The point here is that there are considerable numbers of jihadists running around in Gaza not under control of Hamas. If Hamas can’t keep these firebrands in check then Israel has no choice but to do it itself. And that’s when the Liebermanns of this world speak out. It is ultimately intolerable for a country to have rockets being fired at its citizens; if this keeps on happening there will be those who understandably declare that real decisive action needs to be taken.
        Read http://www.theage.com.au/world/israeli-air-force-raids-gaza-after-rocket-fire-20130624-2ot25.html

      • Cliff on June 25, 2013, 5:26 am

        Mayhem,

        It’s also intolerable for a people to be occupied and their land colonized and stolen from them for 60 years (on and off and then on by the Israelis).

        Israel does not have a RIGHT to violence and while Islamic whatever is firing worthless rockets, Israel is always doing much worse and no Zionist is recommending that the Palestinians use violence against the Israeli military/government.

  2. seafoid on June 24, 2013, 10:33 am

    “so Israel must return to Gaza and carry out a thorough cleaning”.

    Seduction in Hebrew – how the Government speaks to the people
    Threatening to bomb the crap out of Gaza is more potent than viagra in turning Israeli men on

    http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/idf-to-step-up-gaza-assassinations-1.239064
    “Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit was vociferous in his demands for action. “We are trying to talk in English to a population that only understands Arabic,” he said, suggesting that the gloves need to come off.
    “We need to target all those responsible for terrorism without asking who they are. It is not acceptable that we do not respond when we are being attacked. The IDF needs to wipe out a neighborhood in Gaza – warn the residents and then go into the neighborhood.”
    But on the plane, Olmert was almost nonchalant about cabinet criticism concerning the Gaza operations. “There has been fighting in the Gaza Strip for many months. We are holding regular talks on the Gaza Strip and we will have more talks. In 2007 we killed 500 militants in Gaza, so saying that we are doing nothing ignores reality.”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1580339/Israeli-minister-vows-Palestinian-holocaust.html
    “A senior Israeli politician provoked controversy today when he warned that Palestinians firing rockets from Gaza would be punished with a “bigger holocaust” from Israeli armed forces. ”

    http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/barak-our-suffering-is-more-important-than-that-of-gazans-1.244112
    “Barak: Security of Israelis more important than Gazans’ plight
    Defense minister: There is no instant solution for Qassam rocket attacks, but we will eventually find one.”

    John Kerry will be along in a minute to say Israel has his blessing in whatever it decides to do to Gaza.

  3. Maximus Decimus Meridius on June 24, 2013, 11:07 am

    “We are trying to talk in English to a population that only understands Arabic,”

    Seriously, what the HELL is this supposed to mean? Anyone?

    ”The IDF needs to wipe out a neighborhood in Gaza – warn the residents and then go into the neighborhood.”

    And once again: If ANY Muslim politician spoke in remotely similar terms about an Israeli city, the whole world would be expressing its outrage by now. Yet these obnoxious statements won’t even make headlines, even though we’re STILL being reminded of Ahmedinejad’s supposed ‘wipe out Israel’ comments, even though he’s not actually in office anymore.

    • seafoid on June 24, 2013, 11:32 am

      “We are trying to talk in English to a population that only understands Arabic,”
      Seriously, what the HELL is this supposed to mean? Anyone?”

      I think it means “we Israelis are civilised and they are not”.
      They often refer to their higher standards when they talk amongst themselves .

      http://poetry.rapgenius.com/Ee-cummings-yguduh-lyrics#note-1384809

      “ydoan
      yunnuhstan
      ydoan no
      yunnuhstand dem
      yguduh ged
      yunnuhstan dem doidee
      yguduh ged riduh
      ydoan o nudn
      LISN bud LISN
      dem
      gud
      am
      lidl yelluh bas
      tuds weer goin
      duhSIVILEYEzum ”

      The funny thing is that it is the bots who are the ones with zero morality or decency when it comes to Gaza. They are the barbarians.

    • piotr on June 24, 2013, 11:38 pm

      It presumably makes sense in Romanian. Or whatever they speak in Chișinău.

  4. Citizen on June 24, 2013, 11:16 am

    Pesky litter. Get out the vacuum cleaner again. Rough taking care of one’s own living space. I always put off doing the dishes… I like the eating part, but not the dirty dishes.. Woe is me.

  5. justicewillprevail on June 24, 2013, 11:21 am

    “Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with trditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraint goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.” (Robert O Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, p218)

    If the cap fits, wear it.

  6. American on June 24, 2013, 11:51 am

    Not shocking at all….they’ve been house cleaning in Gaza for years.
    They just care less and less about what they say in public.
    The US money and protection keeps coming no matter what they do and threaten.

  7. seafoid on June 24, 2013, 11:54 am

    http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/is-israel-a-legitimate-state.premium-1.531399

    “We would be better off facing reality honestly, with a sober outlook rather than a brain-washed one: A state that was established in large part on the ashes of the Holocaust, whose creation was enthusiastically supported by most nations and whose existence is supported by an even larger majority today, has veered off the path and lost its way; that is the reason for the outcry against it. Israel is cruelly and violently ruling another nation, leaving so many of its sons, who were born here, stripped of self-determination and civil rights, and it defines the rights of its citizens solely according to their national-religious affiliation. Would you support such a state? Is its nature legitimate in your eyes?”

    • Maximus Decimus Meridius on June 24, 2013, 1:16 pm

      ”A state that was established in large part on the ashes of the Holocaust, whose creation was enthusiastically supported by most nations and whose existence is supported by an even larger majority today, has veered off the path and lost its way; that is the reason for the outcry against it”

      Firstly, I reckon if one were to survey the people of the world – not their craven governments – you would find that support for Israel is far from a majority, certainly not a large one. I would say that popular opposition to Israel is stronger now than it has ever been.

      As for ‘veering off the path’, it’s the usual Soft Zionist delusion. Israel is a noble creation, it just got corrupted along the way. Nonsense, of course: Israel was built on violence and ethnic cleansing, and its very existence depends on the continuance of both. Amazing thing is, the above is considered proof of how ‘anguished’ and ‘soul-searching’ ‘moderate’ Israelis are, when in fact the opposite is true. It’s all about them. Always.

      • john h on June 25, 2013, 12:37 am

        “the usual Soft Zionist delusion”

        All Zionism is delusion, illusion, elusion and collusion.

        “It’s all about them. Always.”

        That they deserve their own nation. That that land is theirs by right, by history, and by God. That they will get and keep it all, by any means whatsoever, by whatever it takes. That there is no other morality.

      • seafoid on June 25, 2013, 3:19 am

        Gideon Levy was writing in an Israeli newspaper so it’s fair enough,

        “whose creation was enthusiastically supported by most nations* ”

        Most white nations who felt guilty about WW2
        But there was no free vote of course

        It all comes back to 1948 anyway.

    • AlGhorear on June 24, 2013, 1:37 pm

      Powerful words. Would be nice to read them in the New York Times and hear them on CNN.

  8. Justpassingby on June 24, 2013, 12:16 pm

    Are they bored in the israeli gov? They seek a war every now and then?
    Contemplating about war, ethnic cleansing and colonialism isnt sane.

    • Sumud on June 24, 2013, 2:27 pm

      They seek a war every now and then?

      1. Billion and billion and billion of dollars of free weapons paid for by US taxpayers are piling up and need to be used.
      2. Sixty percent of Israeli companies are involved in making weapons. They must have a new batch of weapons they want to advertise as “battlefield tested”. This is what Gaza is for.

      If you haven’t seen it yet I highly recommend Jeff Halper on this issue (Israel attempting to permanently “warehouse” Palestinians and sell this technology to the world):

      Interview – Jeff Halper – The Global Pacification Industry

      • seafoid on June 25, 2013, 3:31 am

        Zionism is weird. Unlimited cruelty allied with a desperate need to be loved and accepted.

  9. seafoid on June 24, 2013, 12:32 pm

    “Chairman Avigdor Lieberman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee said..”

    Osip Mandelstam wrote
    http://blindflaneur.com/2007/10/29/osip-mandelstam-the-stalin-epigram/

    “We live, deaf to the land beneath us,
    Ten steps away no one hears our speeches,

    But where there’s so much as half a conversation
    The Kremlin’s mountaineer will get his mention.

    His fingers are fat as grubs
    And the words, final as lead weights, fall from his lips,

    His cockroach whiskers leer
    And his boot tops gleam.

    Around him a rabble of thin-necked leaders –
    Fawning half-men for him to play with.

    They whinny, purr or whine
    As he prates and points a finger,

    One by one forging his laws, to be flung
    Like horseshoes at the head the eyes or the groin.

    And every killing is a treat
    For the broad-chested Ossette”

  10. Chu on June 24, 2013, 3:07 pm

    They talk tough, but they’re desperate clowns surviving because of their Zionist networks in the US. I don’t think the Israeli PR machine could handle another round of white phosphorus bombs on innocent civilians. Where’s our man Chuck Hagel, to put them in line? lol…

  11. Talkback on June 24, 2013, 4:31 pm

    Lieberman sounds like some “thorough” Germans.

  12. Sycamores on June 24, 2013, 4:41 pm

    so they want to go to war with Iran, they have already bomb Syria, they are looking at the Lebanon and now they want to ‘cleanse’ Gaza. on and on it goes, constant fear been generated to keep israeli public focus on war not peace. how much longer now before israel self implode from all this madness?

  13. ToivoS on June 24, 2013, 8:57 pm

    If this thread is about outrageous quotes by Israeli officials here is a link to a Fox News piece that came out on April 14th. It hard to believe that this wasn’t picked up before:

    http://video.foxnews.com/v/2503599113001/new-bill-would-fire-fed-workers-who-refuse-to-testify/?playlist_id=2114913880001

    This is former UN Ambassador Gillerman calling on the US to literally wipe North Korea off the map in order to send a strong message to Iran. ht to commentator at MoA who posted an edited youtube link (which is quite accurate):

  14. kayq on June 24, 2013, 9:14 pm

    Good luck wiping out 1.7 million people, Israel.

    This “collective punishment” policy is going to fall back hard on Israel one day. What’s a few (hundred) Hamas fighters compared to a population of a million?

  15. seafoid on June 25, 2013, 1:08 am

    This is a very interesting Zochrot interview of a Jewish soldier who participated in the ethnic cleansing of the Negev in 1948 that led to the setup of the Gaza strip as a holding point for Zionism’s unwanted Untermenschen.

    “They had nothing to defend (themselves with)
    they knew they had to go to Gaza
    And they knew the roads better than we did”

    And Gaza in the Zionist Weltanschauung is about filth and otherness.

  16. talknic on June 25, 2013, 5:20 am

    “A thorough cleaning”

    Mmmmmmm

    SECTION II
    HOSTILITIES
    CHAPTER I
    Means of Injuring the Enemy,
    Sieges, and bombardments
    Art. 22.

    The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited.
    Art. 23.

    In addition to the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially forbidden –
    To declare that no quarter will be given;

  17. talknic on June 25, 2013, 5:33 am

    ”The IDF needs to wipe out a neighborhood in Gaza – warn the residents and then go into the neighborhood.”

    “Hey Mahmoud, what do you think you’re doing? You can’t read that, it’s for civilians only ………….. pssst….. what does it say?”

    “It says civilians only should flee the war zone to… to… uh… to… oh, some other part of the war zone, because one of the most modern equipped militaries in the world with their tanks, artillery, fighter bombers, missiles, fletchettes, cluster bombs, white phosphorus, infantry and billions of loverly dollars of US military aid, is coming to get us”

    “Uh huh. Nice of them to give everyone warning”

    “But they’re only warning civilians”

    “Too late now, we’ve read th’ leaflet”

    “We could pretend we haven’t

    “WHY?”

    Well, doesn’t that sort of screw their plan?”

    “Not if you’re an Israeli propagandist pretending to be concerned about civilian casualties.”

    “Ah. I see….So…..how much time have we got?”

    “A few hours”

    “OK…. hand me another one of them rickety olde home made rockets. Maybe we can hit something other than sand before we get outta here!”

    “Right…. Uh… when you say … “get outta here” … er … th’ crossings are all closed, there’s only here to go unless we swim out to sea “

    “They control that too! Not even being driven into th’ sea for these lil’ semites.”

    • seafoid on June 25, 2013, 6:15 am

      It’s Not Just About Fear, Bibi, It’s About Hopelessness

      January 10, 2013

      Nomika Zion, with an introduction by Avishai Margalit

      http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/jan/10/its-not-just-about-fear-bibi-its-about-hopelessnes/

      “How did we, as a society, lose the ability to formulate questions about the feasibility of a political alternative? How did it happen that a person who suggests a nonviolent solution is the delusional one, the traitor, and the one who calls for the leveling of Gaza is the true patriot? How did peace become the enemy of the people, and war always the preferred option? How did it happen that dialogue and treaties cause more public fear than a volley of missiles? And how did these dehumanizing processes seal us off from the suffering of others? How did we lose the capacity for empathy? What does it mean that a girl from Gaza—whose school was bombed and her best friend was killed before her eyes—has to remind us that they, too, are human beings? And how has a nation that has occupied other people’s territory for forty-five years continued to tell itself, with such deep conviction, that we are the single and ultimate victim in this story? And the evil of the occupation has become so banal that no one sees the evil anymore.
      “

  18. iResistDe4iAm on June 25, 2013, 11:47 am

    Summary (& infographic) of violations of the Gaza cease fire in the first 3 months (22 November 2012 to 22 February 2013)…
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/2013220152044327694.html

    List of Israeli violations of the Gaza cease fire (as at 20 June 2013)…
    http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/gazaunderattack-4th-israeli-violation-of-truce-palestinian-injured-after-being-shot-by-israeli-troops-in-gaza/

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