The geniuses running Israel are still waging a public relations campaign against their own country by slaughtering Gazans with completely disproportionate force.
GAZA — Israeli airstrikes against Hamas facilities in Gaza continued for a second day on Sunday and the death toll rose to more than 280 as Israel retaliated for rocket fire from the area with its most severe campaign against Palestinian militants in decades.
The Palestinian groups again launched barrages of rockets and mortars into Israel on Sunday, extending their reach further than ever before, and the Israeli government approved the emergency call up of thousands of army reservists in preparation for a possible ground operation.
The Palestinian rockets don’t stop. They probably won’t stop. And even if they do stop, they will not stop for long. Israel is only defeating itself…the exact same way I predicted they would in Lebanon.
The key difference with Lebanon is that Hamas doesn’t really have any means of hitting back. Their fire cracker missiles are next to nothing. The Lebanon war ended when Israel was taking more losses than it could bear. The “International Community” didn’t stop it.
Actually, the key in Lebanon is that they could not achieve their minimum objective, which was to stop the rockets. Those rockets were more lethal, but the principle is the same.
As for the current war, Fatah seems to be siding with Israel.
That will not do much for Fatah’s reputation among the Palestinians, but they should be well paid.
Fatah has no choice.
What kind of long-term sense does it make for Fatah?
Hamas is the rightfully elected government of Palestine. Hamas won the election because Fatah was seen by the majority of Palestinians as corrupt and too willing to compromise with the occupation and the recalcitrance of the Israeli government.
Fatah conspires with Israel because Hamas represents an existential threat to the continued corruption, greed and treason which Fatah practices.
Fatah is the Alan Colmes to Israel’s Hannity.
g.
You might not be wrong but here’s another perspective.
http://www.mideastyouth.com/2008/12/20/hamas-take-your-hands-off-the-people/
Right on, Mattes!
It doesn’t. It would be suicide.
Israel/USA/Condi were very successful in starting a civil war between the two. I wrote a diary on DK. I’ll look for it.
meanwhile, some history:
After that, Hamas kidnapped the soldiers.
Israel destroyed any chance for unity government that could negotiate for peace….back to the meme…no partner for peace. Israel makes sure of it.
Thanks, Mattes. The civil war between Hamas and Fatah was indeed the joint work of Israel and the USA with Condi playing a significant role.
And let’s not promote their propaganda language by using it ourselves. Soldiers are not kidnapped, they are captured.
Booman, that’s a crucial difference. Hizbullah was able to shut down a third of the country indefinitely. The missiles forced a ground operation that was equally ineffective and costly. After two weeks there was a growing push in the Israeli public to end the war because it was costly to them.
Hamas can’t do that. They can’t impose a price on the Israelis and the public will never tire of one sided slaughter. True, Hamas will likely be able to fire some small missiles that do minimal damage but that’s not such a big deal.
And the global outcry has been relatively muted. This is a serious problem since if the Israelis can kill this many without consequence, they will be encouraged to kill even more next time. And the time after that.
I wouldn’t throw the word “holocaust” around lightly, but the pals have been so dehumanized that the Israelis may believe they can commit one and get away with it. And maybe they can if no one complains.
Obama’s silence is annoying, but then again, if he spoke, all he’d say is that Israel has to defend itself, we stand behind them, yadda yadda yadda. Perhaps silence is the best we can hope for.
@ Mattes. Fatah indeed has no choice. The puppet can’t resist the pull of the strings.
“I wouldn’t throw the word “holocaust” around lightly“
Why not? Not that long ago an Israeli government official publicly made exactly that threat against Gaza, using using the word Shoah, which is precisely “Holocaust” in Hebrew. If an Israeli government official can used that word to describe Israel’s intentions toward Gaza, why shouldn’t you?
BooMan, stopping the rockets was not Israel’s key objective in Lebanon in 2006 any more than “rescuing” their “kidnapped” soldiers was. The objective was considerably bigger than stopping the rockets.
Abbas is a fool. Ehud Barak just said that Israel doesn’t want a ceasefire.
I’m with the people who protested today to unite all Palestinians. Leave Abbas (the sore loser) in the dust.
Fatah have been for decades deeply corrupt people who care far more about their own self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment than about the Palestinian people and the future of Palestine. They have willingly sold out the Palestinians again and again and again for their own personal gain. That is precisely why so many Palestinians, including many Muslim, secular, and Christian Palestinians who could not be considered Hamas supporters voted Hamas into power.
Hanan Ashrawi gives a very good account in her 1996 book, This Side of Peace of the peace negotiations she was involved in and how Arafat and his cronies undermined them.
Never fear, Livni is launching a new PR campaign. And of course the blackout on American news channels helps.
The media really is pathetic, particularly the cable networks like the socalled mainstream cnn. They dedicated fourtfive minutes debating the “barak the magic negro” scandal tonight, and 5 minutes on the tva coal slug spill, and no time at all to the invasion of Gaza. No wonder young people are turning the internet. CNN considers political scandals to be hard news.
The Palestinian rockets don’t stop. They probably won’t stop. And even if they do stop, they will not stop for long. Israel is only defeating itself…
As long as world leadership – the U.S.A and Britain – remain silent as Israelis deprive Gazans of the basic necessities of life in the futile attempt to bring them into submission, Israel will continue to take the green light. Peoples deprived of their basic rights will fight back with whatever little they have — be it stones or rockets.
Just imagine.. as the BBC noted this morning; ten million Palestinians are exiled worldwide, uprooted from their villages for the creation of Israel. And today 1.5 million walled in Gazans are being bombed by Israel, the oppressor. Israel repeats the pogroms. Wall them in, starve them and those who survive will be bombed.
What an atrocity!!.
The rockets that were launched killed one Israeli.
Long ago Jews maintained the life of one Jew equals 1000 Palestinians. So I guess the bombings won’t stop. Ehud Barak told BBC..”we’ll keep fighting until the rockets stop” I suppose that means killing all 1.5 million Gazans.
But the Wall of Shame under which the Jews stole Palestinian lands and the bombings are mere fig leaves.
What is at play here is the Oil curse.
Unfortunately for Gazans, natural gas lies off their coast..reported to be billions in reserve. Two years ago, (reported by The Times, UK), Israel gave a lease to British Energy- valued at $4 billion – without Palestinians having any input, so Hamas put the kabosh on it.
Israelis’ error of judgement and greed is setting up for a repeat of history.
Oh, noooo, idredit, you just don’t get it. As BooMan as so unbiasedly pointed out, Israel is just defending itself. Do you have ANY IDEA AT ALL how much Israelis are suffering every single moment of every single day as a result of all those horrific attacks from Hamas? Why, one of my contacts in Herzlia told me just the other day that he was unable to enjoy his daily latte at his favourite cafe because – oh, wait, that was because his wife’s car was in the shop and he had to let her use his. Nevermind.
Wait, wait! Now I remember. Another one of my contacts in Tel Aviv was unable to go clubbing just the other weekend because – oh, wait, sorry. That was because his cousin got married and he had to go out of town to the wedding. Nevermind.
“Israel is only defeating itself.“
Could someone please point the way to the vomitorium? I feel my lunch coming up.
BooMan, you just can’t show this kind of bias and still claim to be unbiased.
Helena Cobban, Middle East analyst extraordinaire, cites the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in this very important commentary. I hope that those who sincerely believe they are unbiased and yet consistently repeat, at times verbatim, the standard Israeli talking points, will heed and think about Helena’s discussion of “cognitive capture”, and in particular the way it results in internalization of the message:
Helena points out the following well-documented facts:
“Israel violated the tahdi’eh (ceasefire) numerous times throughout its six-month term, often lethally. Hamas violated it only a few times, and worked strenuously (and often, though not always, successfully) to persuade the other Palestinian groups in Gaza to abide by it, too.
“In November, one month before the expiry of the mutually agreed tahdi’eh, Israel sent a sizeable ground force into southern Gaza to destroy suspected tunnels there [note that they were “suspected” tunnels. Also be aware that there are tunnels, and that they are used primarily to smuggle food, medical supplies, fuel, and other humanitarian goods from Egypt into Gaza – H].
“That was the big violation Haaretz was referring to today, when its editorial writers noted that,
‘Israel’s violation of the lull in November expedited the deterioration that gave birth to the war of yesterday.’
And here is the real meat of the article:
“In the realm of economic policy, Willem Buiter and others have coined the term “cognitive capture” to describe how financiers managed to persuade regulators and legislators to look at the financial world almost wholly from their viewpoint.
“It strikes me it’s also a good term to describe the way pro-Israeli organizations in the US have almost completely succeeded in having the country’s commentators and politicians look at the Middle East almost wholly through their eyes.
“
Helena goes on to comment on “the degree to which those ‘captured’, or brainwashed, may…have actually internalized the messages of those seeking to ‘capture’ them. It also fails to capture the degree to which the powerful forces doing the ‘capturing’ succeed in their capture/brainwashing task ab initio by sustaining powerful campaigns to ensure that no-one who even questions their mindset or is capable of bringing an independent, querying mind to their task is even allowed into the positions of influence that they seek to control.“
Please read the entire article, and take a look at the other valuable pieces on her blog. Helena is a fantastic resource on the Middle East.