No surprise, Israel never takes my advice.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Unintentional Irony Award:
Bush is soooo right! I mean, blockading the Gaza strip for two years can’t have anything to do with worsening conditions there, can it?
And not allowing fishermen out to where the fish are, and destroying the boats they use to make their living, and shooting farmers for being in their fields – not a factor.
How many more days will we have to be subjected to this fool?
I think you missed the irony I was referring to.
No, contrary to what you would like to believe, I do understand irony. I got it. There are a number of layers of stupidity in Bush’s remark, and I chose to comment on a different layer, that’s all.
It’s not so much that Gaza with its very limited resources buys rockets, but the damage Gaza receives after using them. It was utterly predictable. I would guess Booman is referring to the irony of Bush, who bankrupted the country, the world overspending on military expenditures. But the same could be said of Israel.
But ultimately, it is a wise politcal expenditure. Bush managed to organize political support around fear and hate of the other. It worked for the better part of his two terms. Lots of his peeps made lots and lots of money. Israel’s political right is reaping huge rewards for this. Meanwhile, Hamas as an institution (although individual leaders seem to be disappearing) will come out of this with an even stronger hold on the Gazans, who will hate Israel more, be more impoverished, and will be able to blame it all on Israel. Everyone gets what they want, except, of course, the children dying in the streets.
Yes, Bob, I got the irony BooMan intended. And as I said there are also several layers there. Just in case it was not clear, the stupidity layer I was pointing out was that the deterioration of living conditions in Gaza over the last two years, and also before that is a direct result of the blockade that has not only crippled the economy but made it impossible even for the people with money to buy food and medicine, because there just isn’t any to be had.
I don’t see Hamas as “having a hold on” Gazans in some sort of “cult-like” way. That image just doesn’t fit what I know, and it certainly is not apt for any of the Gazans I know or have known. Gazans are just people who live in Gaza, and there is no monolithic entity known as “the Gazans”. It would probably surprise most Americans to know just how divergent they are in just about every way from religion to politics to lifestyle. It would probably surprise even more Americans to know that there are and have always been Christian Gazans living right in there side by side with Muslim Gazans.
Not withstanding the billions spent by our own military that could have been used in countless other ways.
All the blood shed for nothing. Sad beyond words.
.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. “Israel has been supplying comprehensive humanitarian aid to the strip,” she said during a trip to Paris.
UNRWA – Stop the Killing in Gaza
≈ Cross-posted from my diary — Breaking News: Israel Ground Forces Enter Gaza ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“Israel has been supplying comprehensive humanitarian aid to the strip”
That is a hideous, unmitigated lie. I know doctors in Gaza, and Israel has not supplied a single thing for them. And I know human beings in Gaza, and there is no bread because there is no flour and no electricity to grind any.
Bloody, filthy, lying bitch.
It is the micro-managed, international PR campaign by Israel, since the only press in Gaza is from Palestinian reporters who can still contact the outside. Foreign press has been pushed back miles away, so I am sure the news you get are ´selective´.
Cuatro TV in Spain today showed a video of an Israeli hospital near the strip, which had been evacuated! to prepare for Israeli casualties. It was deserted and spotless, except for 1. staff with nothing to do and 2. the management/officials who were showing it to Mike Bloomberg!!
That´s Israel´s humanitarian aid!
Yesterday we saw how some proud and awed Israeli youngsters with binoculars, entertained themselves by watching the bombs fall on Gaza from higher ground some kilometers away.
Speechless!
Hamas will be defeated and a Fatah regime will be set up which the people will really hate and the Israelis can sit back and wath the Pals blow each other up instead of sending over ineffectual rockets that might hit something. Hat tip to the guys at Lawyers, Guns and Money…and like LGM, I don’t see any sort of effective end plan here, just more blood and stupidity.
And Obama was silent, you know, one President at a time.
And Bush ran off his mouth from 4000 miles away, proving that he is a monster, and wanting everyone else to be a monster too.
and the rest of them? Oh fie, maybe they should stop this, but let’s not let it interfere with supper.
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DENVER – Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter named Denver’s public schools superintendent Michael Bennet as his choice to fill a Senate vacancy that will be created by the promotion of Sen. Ken Salazar to interior secretary in the Obama administration.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."For the record, this from Amnesty International:
“all Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, including the armed wing of the Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas’ al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, have continued to launch rockets from Gaza into southern Israel.“
Oooops! It seems that their boys from Fatah have been firing rockets too. What are they gonna do now?
Washington Post
People must be terrified. This is a nightmare and with U.S. weapons. What will Israel do after invading and killing a bunch of people? Leave immediately? Stay for a year or five or ten? Israel needs to come to a political settlement with the Palestinian people. Where will this lead? It will lead to another endless, hopeless nowhere with a lot of innocent Gazans getting murdered on the way.
“Israel dropped leaflets over northern Gaza urging residents to leave their homes.“
Exactly! And go where?! As you say, Gaza is tiny. The entire Gaza strip is about 140 square miles, three times the size of San Francisco, and is the most densely populated place on earth with 1.5 million human beings packed into that small area.
And what should they do for shelter? Gaza gets very cold in the winter time.
I am sick with worry about my friends in Gaza city, and their families in Rafah and Khan Yunis. My friend Hani’s father is a very elderly man now, and not in the best of health, though I am sure his wicked sense of humour is still intact. Hani adores his father, and he is the baby so his father adores him. And Hani and Majdi both have two year old daughters who have learned, at this tender age, the meaning of the word fear. Majdi’s wife is a beautiful young woman inside and out, kind and sweet, and bright. I have never met Hani’s wife, but I feel a connection with her nevertheless because I acted as Hani’s romantic adviser during the years between the time they fell in love (on the internet!), met for the first time (he lived in Rafah and she in Khan Yunis) and he was finally able to go to her family with a proposal of marriage. And there are others too that I think about and worry about.
I have not heard from Hani in months, but I talk to Majdi and we exchange e-mails on a regular basis. I have not heard from him, seen him online, or been able to contact him for two days. I don’t know what I will do if the Israelis harm them or their families.
He is probably without electricity or internet. I truly hope your friends and their families are safe. Two year old daughters, that is gut wrenching. Israel needs to stop this insanity. Please Hurria, let us know if you speak with Hani or Majdi.
Thanks, Salunga, I will.
Demonstration in Philly over Israel-Gaza conflict, completed just hours before ground offensive began.
There’s been some discussion here recently about Hamas, the basis for its goals, and what it wants. It reminded me of a recent article by Middle East analyst extraordinaire, Helena Cobban.
Helena has studied Hamas for years, and has written extensively about it. She interviewed the elected Hamas leaders in March, 2006, and traveled to Damascus in January, 2008 to interview the Hamas leader Khalid Mash`al. One of the advantages of Helena’s writing about Hamas as about most other things, is that she has a realistic approach that is not distorted by the usual negative bias found in most western analysis.
I recommend reading the whole article, plus her other writings which she links to in the article. Here are some excerpts:
“Most people in the west have been wilfully mis- or dis-informed about Hamas and believe either that it is made up of wild-eyed men of violence who perpetrate violence for its own sake, or that its main goal is the violent expulsion of all Jewish people from Israel/Palestine.
“These impressions are quite misleading.Yes, Hamas has used significant amounts of violence against Israelis since it was founded in 1987. But so too has Israel, against Hamas. Indeed, Israel has killed many times more Hamas supporters and leaders than Hamas has ever killed Israelis. Does that mean we understand Israelis to be only “mindless, wild-eyed men of violence”? No. For both sides, we need to try to understand what they seek to achieve with the violence they use; as well as the conditions under which they can be expected to moderate or end it.”
……………….
“It is worth noting upfront that the large-scale escalation was the one that was launched by Israel, yesterday. What Hamas had done, prior to that, was not launch any particularly new surges of violence; mainly, it announced it would not be renewing the six-month-long ceasefire (tahdi’eh) it had maintained, by mutual agreement, with Israel since last June. That, after numerous significant Israeli infractions of the ceasefire, especially since November.
“So Question 1 here might be: Why, precisely, did Hamas decide it would not renew the ceasefire? That question probably needs more studying. Israel’s violations in the ceasefire’s last weeks are presumably one factor. But if Hamas really wanted the ceasefire renewed, was there more it could have done to try to negotiate that? I don’t know. One thing I do recall, though, is some angry accusations by Hamas spokesmen in recent weeks that the Egyptian government officials who in the first half of the year had worked long and hard to broker the June ceasefire had ceased (in Hamas’s view) to play an “honest broker” role, and were putting pressure on Hamas to continue the ceasefire on terms much more favorable to Israel than during the first ceasefire.
“
She goes on to discuss Hamas’ broader strategy over the last few years, and then summarizes this way:
“So what, at the end of the day, do the Hamas leaders want? They want, firstly, what all other other people in the world want: the ability to nurture and build their national community in their own national homeland free of the threat of violence, encirclement, and siege from any outside powers. They want their land and resources to be free of the threat of being expropriated by any outside power. They want free access to their holy places and the ability to exercise control over them. They want satisfactory redress or restitution for the injustices of the past.
“These aims are not so different from what most Israelis want for themselves, too. Are the national goals of Israelis completely incompatible with those of the pro-Hamas Palestinians? I don’t think so. In an environment in which the equal humanity and the basic needs of all people are respected, people of good will could certainly see a way in which the claims of Hamas’s Palestinian supporters and those of Israelis could all be met to a degree sufficient to allow the continued peaceful coexistence between the two peoples within the land that to which both are deeply attached.
“…the notion that the claims of Jewish Israelis should everywhere and always be completely privileged over those of Palestinians is an anachronism in today’s world. It is an anachronism, true, that has been upheld for many decades now by the US…But it’s an anachronism that can’t be given continued credence in the international system for very much longer.
“
Thanks to Diane at Lawrence of Cyberia for this oh, so true quote:
“What the Israeli governments do not realize is that neither Hamas nor Hezbollah need Israel. It is Israel that needs them, and needs them desperately. If Israel wants not to become a Crusader state that is in the end extinguished, it is only Hamas and Hezbollah that can guarantee the survival of Israel. It is only when Israel is able to come to terms with them, as the deeply-rooted spokespersons of Palestinian and Arab nationalism, that Israel can live in peace“.
— What Can Israel Achieve?, by Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University; 1 Aug 2006.