On CNN today, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Israel has a right to defend itself, but she is concerned about “proportionality.”
Wolf Blitzer asked what she meant by proportionality: that Israel is “overreacting… going too far?” Albright confessed that It’s hard to watch what’s going on.
Well I do think that it is very hard to watch the number of Palestinians that are being killed– innocents. It is hard to dispute the fact that as Prime Minister Netanyahu has said, that in fact, there are innocents being put in the way in order to act as shields, but the bottom line is that I think this is hurting Israel’s moral authority. I do think it that it looks as though they are overdoing…
Where are the bad optics? They’re on the networks. Last night on NBC Richard Engel at Shifa Hospital spotlighted a beautiful 10-year-old who is “completely paralyzed and doesn’t know her mother and two sisters are dead. And then he interviewed volunteer doctor Mads Gilbert saying that another girl’s only crime was being born Palestinian. Mads Gilbert on the network news. About time. Here’s Dr. Gilbert’s quote:
This is a Palestinian child. Guilty of the most horrible crime, to be born Palestinian in Gaza.
Later, talking to Steve Kornacki of MSNBC, Engel said that Israel’s attack sure doesn’t seem “pinpoint” to him (apropos of the Kerry statement). There has been wholesale carnage– children flung from buildings by bombs, he said.
Oh and here is Ayman Mohyeldin:
P.S. Today, over on MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell fretted over the fact that international carriers aren’t flying into Tel Aviv as of this afternoon. She seemed concerned that it was going to hurt Israel economically (and Mitchell is married to a former Federal Reserve chairman). More bad p.r. It’s always the extrinsic factors.
Phil
I dont know where you get all your optimism for, hasnt this conflict showed that Israel have more friends than ever in the west and media? Your own example blame palestinians not Israel.
I’ve been hearing that word “proportionality” much in the past 24 hours. I think that is the new buzz word, it says “go ahead and kill, but stop after a while and try not to kill so many at one time!”
Meanwhile Israeli PM, Mr. Satan (my new nickname) is in a bit of a bind. He probably could have cut his loses last week but now with the loss of 30 odd men (and possibly more) he’s got no choice but to invade. I pity those poor people who will on the receiving of those Golani boys’ revenge. The country is even more racist and uncompromising than it was during Cast Lead.
The people there believe that this is their last stand, they won’t go quietly.
Madeleine (500,000 dead Iraqis) Albright is hardly in a position to talk about moral authority. She’s another Jew who lost family members in the Holocaust who went over to the dark side.
Zionism traded Jewish diaspora moral authority (however deluded) for political power . And they liked the guns so they dumped the moral stuff altogether.
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/jerusalem-babylon/.premium-1.600000
“Yeshayahu Leibowitz ….wrote in his seminal essay “After Kibiyeh” (collected in “Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State,” edited by Eliezer Goldman, Harvard University Press 1995) of “the fear of losing religous-moral supremacy, which is easy to hold on to when there is no risk to it and difficult under other circumstances.” “
>> M.A.: Well I do think that it is very hard to watch the number of Palestinians that are being killed … I think this is hurting Israel’s moral authority.
Israel is an oppressive, colonialist, expansionist and supremacist state; born of terrorism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes and lands; and engaged in a 60+ years, ON-GOING and offensive (i.e., not defensive) campaign of aggression, oppression, theft, colonization, destruction, torture and murder.
Israel refuses to halt is occupation and colonization of Palestine; it refuses to honour its obligations under international law; it refuses to accept responsibility and accountability for its past and ON-GOING (war) crimes; and it refuses to enter into sincere negotiations for a just and mutually-beneficial peace.
Israel has no “moral authority”. It is not a “moral beacon” or a “light unto the nations”.
But, hey, at least it’s not Saudi Arabia, Mali or African “hell-holes”!
and the discovery-for the second time in a week-by the UNRWA of Hamas bombs and missiles stored in a school house located between two other UNRWA run ‘schools’ now currently housing refugees from Shuhda sector. UNRWA “registered” its “shock” with relevant authorities. Not that the Hamas would want to confuse IDF into mistaking one refugee ‘school’ for one that holds missiles, would they. And naturally-in the world of the left-wing/Euro, Israel haters this is not a PR problem for Hamas and those that readily support them?