I guess the Israelis decided they should use the transition period to start a war. Not very cool.
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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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With Allies/friends like the Israelis, who needs real jihadists/enemies?
Steve Clemons – The hijacking of Obama’s Middle East Strategy
Barack Obama cannot afford to allow his presidency and its foreign policy course to be hijacked by either side in this increasingly blurry dispute. Israel’s actions today just created thousands of aggrieved and vengeful relatives committed to delivering some blowback against Israel.
And the neocons get the last laugh on the way out the door. India and Pakistan are on the brink of war, Israel has decided on collective punishment again and daring the world to stop them, Iraq has boiled over again and Afghanistan is on the verge of collapse.
We may not make it until January 20 at this rate without multiple full scale wars erupting.
In the course of two days the Israelis have ended more than 300 human lives forever, wounded and maimed many times more human beings, some of them for life, destroyed buildings, damaged homes, terrorized an entire population (my friend’s two year old daughter has now added to her verbal abilities the phrase “Ana Khayfa, Baba” – “I am afraid, Daddy” – how charming is that?) and created more misery on top of the misery brought on by two years of genocidal collective punishment for the crime of electing the “wrong” party. But no big deal, after all, they were just defending themselves.
But doing all that in the middle of Obama’s precious transition period? – waaaaaaay not cool.
It’s funny (not haha funny, but chin-scratching peculiar funny) how the “collateral damage” in NYC and Washington was justification for a decade of American bloodlust throughout the Mideast, but the genocide of the people in Gaza is justified and hardly news.
When someone says that someone else’s property belongs to them because God says so it always seems to end badly.
.
The UN General Assembly president Miguel D’Escoto listed Israeli violations in the statement:
“I remind all member states of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law — regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations,” the president said in the statement.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
“The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the cease-fire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The US commands the Palestinians to shut their mouths, stop objecting, and walk quietly into the gas chambers.
Oh yes, and asks that after they are all dead they kindly clean up after themselves.
cheney and the neoCONs were going to get their war on somewhere before they left office…guess this is plan b, since they couldn’t get iran, and the israeli’s were jonsin’ for some action.
23 days and counting.
I will assume that “understatement” is “cool”
right now.
Okey-Dokey, then.
Since Neoconism requires war for sustenance, there is no doubt in my mind that the American Neocon machine is very actively involved behind the scenes encouraging increased conflict in the India/Pakistan and Israel/Palestinian arenas.
And it goes without saying that they will find resonance with like minded Wargasm enthusiasts within the Israeli and Hamas and Pakistani and Indian governments and organizations.
I don’t think any American president during my lifetime will cut off the funding to the Middle East or to India-Pakistan either; funding which ultimately pumps in more weaponry into those regions.
I don’t think you will find very many “wargasm” enthusiasts within Hamas. There is quite a bit of evidence for this. For one thing, Hamas has proposed numerous ceasefires, and in the absence of cooperation from Israel has declared a number of unilateral ones, which it has honoured in the face of often very extreme Israeli provocation. Hamas has also proven far better than Israel at keeping ceasefires, including the latest one, which Israel violated over and over again, and finally broke altogether when it launched a major ground incursion into Gaza to blow up “suspected tunnels”. Hamas broke the ceasefire only about three times, and then only in response to fire from Israel. In addition, Hamas worked very hard to get other militant groups such as Islamic Jihad to honour the ceasefire.
Hamas is, I believe, far more interested in political matters than it is in war. However, it does have a right to defend itself.
Hamas appears to be far more interested in keeping the peace than Israel or the United States.
What do you think of this?
I received a message from the photojournalist and peace activist Sameh Habeeb from Gaza while I was looking at the news in the Austrian TV, which pierced my ears with talk about the rockets which Hamas supposedly shoots at the “innocent Israeli occupation” which has jailed one and half million in Gaza since before Al-Aqsa Intifada broke out
The rockets depicted in that picture (and on the video) look more like the fancy bengalas which can be bought in many shops all over the world before festivities than any known weapon.
– These so-called “rockets” appear to not have place for fuel or an engine, but they are supposed to fly 10-15Km ? How do they accomplish this miracle?
http://palestinethinktank.com/2008/12/26/kawther-salam-the-rockets-of-hunger-and-israeli-propaganda/
Well, I can tell you that since June, 2008 when the ceasefire was declared, Hamas rockets have not killed a single Israeli. Israel has certainly not reciprocated in kind.
While it’s painfully obvious that there is a serious ongoing campaign by Israel and the “West” to demonize Hamas out of all proportion to reality, any suggestion that implies that whatever enthusiasm for fighting and bloodshed on the part of some influential people connected with Hamas is, to my mind, a bit naive at best.
None of this excuses the sort of Israeli behavior demonstrated these last couiple of days, and likewise, I certainly offer no excuses that could be construed to legitimize these rocket attacks on generally random, (often civilian), areas in Israel from the occupied territories.
Throughout history, long standing, long simmering conflicts like this always include a Wargasm element on both sides of the equation. And plenty of others from other places to exploit the conflict for their own ends.
Hit post before preview.
Inserted in bold below is what I forgot to include in the previous post.
“…any suggestion that implies that whatever enthusiasm for fighting and bloodshed on the part of some influential people connected with Hamas is negligible, is to my mind, a bit naive at best.
And in addition to not demeaning me, please do not put words into my mouth in order to create an argument for yourself. I did not state or suggest that anything was negligible.
It is my view, based on considerable evidence, including observation of Hamas’ conduct, and analysis by very astute people who have had direct contact with Hamas leadership, that there is not a lot of enthusiasm for bloodshed as a tactic among Hamas members at this time, and that the organization is evolving in other directions. It is particularly clear to me that there is less enthusiasm for violence as a tactic in Hamas than in Israel or the United States.
If you disagree with that view, and have some facts or other evidence to support your opposing view, I am more than open to hearing them. What I am not open to is having you make your argument by putting words into my mouth and demeaning me as some kind of wide eyed person whose views have no basis other than wide-eyed naivete.
I wasn’t challenging the veracity of what you said specifically, but rather was making the broader point.
I do think that whoever it was who launched these recent rockets into Israel were real idiots, to put it mildly. And regardless of how ineffective the actual rockets themselves were in terms of destruction or fatalities, they were a provocative act, whether committed naively or with the intent to provoke.
The very fact that the sociopath Netanyahu and the abominable Livni are rising in popularity in Israel now should send a clear signal to anyone that such attacks as even these pathetic rockets would almost certainly provoke a vicious retaliation. Whether Hamas itself had any direct role in ‘allowing’ these rockets to be launched is, in reality, beside the point right now.
Take note I am not putting words in yourt mouth, nor am I attempting to demean you in any way, nor, finally, do I have any desire to personalize this discussion.
“I wasn’t challenging the veracity of what you said specifically, but rather was making the broader point.“
You were using the debate tactic of avoiding having to argue the substance by dismissing your interlocutor and her views as “naive at best”. You offered no actual argument in opposition to the view you objected to as naive, and I’m afraid your broader point rather got lost. What you did was issue a conversation stopper. But I appreciate your attempt to mend, it is all water under the bridge, and bygones are bygones.
As for firing the rockets – and I assume it was Hamas that fired them, though I have not verified that – I don’t know what they had in mind when they chose to do it, and maybe it was every bit as stupid as you think it was. On the other hand, when scrupulously observing ceasefire after ceasefire brings about only unilateral violations of increasing destructiveness and deadliness from Israel along with, mysteriously, worldwide vilification of you as the terrorist aggressor, and when your restraint in the face of Israel’s repeated violations leads only to worse and worse attacks by Israel, more death and destruction in the territory and of the people you are responsible for, and incomprehensibly more and more vilification of you as the terrorist aggressor, what do you do?
As my horse trainer said to me years ago, “stop doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Try something different”. How much and how brutally must a captive population quietly take before it strikes back? How much stoicism in the face of atrocity is required? How long must people remain passive while being subjected to crimes that more and more sober observers are calling genocidal?
I’m just asking. I don’t know the answer. When week after week, month after month non-violence does not work against a powerful, oppressor who is willing to use massive and bloody violence against an entire population, what do you do next? Do you defend yourself, do you fight back, or do you just refuse to fight back, and walk quietly and passively to the mass grave they have dug for you, climb in, lie down, cross your arms, close your eyes, and wait for them to start shoveling the dirt over you? Because that is very close to what some people seem to be asking of the Palestinians.
Seriously, who am I and who are you to say what people should do in circumstances we can barely imagine? I just don’t know.
By the way, I very much appreciate and enjoy your choice of words to describe Netanyahu and Livni. On the other hand, I have to point out that in all its history Israel has never had a leadership that valued peace and acceptance as much as it valued territorial expansion and dominance. Each and every “peace process” has in reality been for Israel a stalling tactic to allow them to grab more land, create more irreversible facts on the ground (a very basic Zionist tactic since pre-statehood), and continue the construction of what Jeff Halper calls the “matrix of control” designed to induce the Palestinians to abandon Palestine by squeezing them tighter and tighter and making life more and more untenable for them.
Well, there is the possible exception of Moshe Sharett, who was generally viewed as weak and ineffectual. We will never know what he might have done had he had the chance, but he appeared to hold somewhat different values than the others in that regard.
I think the list of countries whose governments have not had expansion and control as primary goals driving the heart of their policy as they were establishing themselves is a very short one indeed. Some of these expansions took place in antiquity, and some, like the US and Israel and Pakistan, are much newer.
Right now, except for those countries recently formed as a result of being freed from the dominance of other countries of which they were once a part, (Like Bangladesh, for instance), Bhutan seems to be the only one I can think of that never had expansionist ambition.
Really. So, Israel is a country like every other country and therefore we should not condemn it for putting expansion and domination above peace, nor for acting on that preference at the expense of millions of human beings? I don’t think that is what you mean, is it?
But we are supposedly living in an enlightened period in which the needs and rights of human beings are observed and honoured, are we not? And if Israel is a country like any other country, then how many western democracies (and Israel IS a western country in every way except location) that were created after WW II when the world was supposed to be so much more enlightened than before have been created by a population population coming from another continent and driving out the indigenous population that had inhabited the land continuously for centuries? How many such countries have had territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing as a primary driving motive starting well before their creation and continuing until the present moment? And how many such countries have had as a necessity for their creation and a requirement for their continued existence the ethnic cleansing not only of their original territory, but of the territory into which they insist upon to expanding? And how many of them have systematically undertaken and successfully executed, beginning well prior to their creation and continuing until this present moment, a variety of means, including terrorism, massacres, and expulsion, of ethnically cleansing both their original territory and the territory into which they insist up expanding? And how many of those countries have systematically ethnically cleansed large areas of their own territory of “undesirable” portions of their own citizenry? And how many of those countries have had discussions at the government level about ethnically cleansing the entire country of those “undesirable” portions of their own citizenry – in other words, of expelling their own citizens simply for being members of the wrong ethno/religious group? And how many of those countries are in the process at this moment of systematically ethnically cleansing, and expropriating territory outside their borders into which they are in a gradual process of expanding?
I only know of one such western democracy created in the enlightened period after WW II. Do you know of any others?
Did I say that?
I mean;
Did I say that?
You kind of implied it. Or at least you made it the easiest thing to infer, though I did say “I don’t think that is what you mean, is it?”, because I could not imagine based on what you have said before that it was.
So, if that was not what you meant, then what WAS your point?
Note, please, that I did not say there are no lovers of violence among Hamas. My point is that evidence indicates that there is less enthusiasm for the use of violence in Hamas than there has been in the past, and than there is in the other parties, specifically Israel, and the United States.
Hamas has changed some of its goals and its means of achieving them, supports a two state solution, and has recognized the value of the political over the military. In recent years Hamas has shown great restraint in using firepower even in the face of some extreme provocation by Israel, and has been far better at honouring ceasefires and other such agreements than Israel has been. Hamas has also been better than Fatah ever was at gaining the cooperation of other militant groups in honouring ceasefires.
There are a lot of very good, solid reasons to believe that Hamas is, as a group, less interested in bloodshed and fighting than it has been before, and certainly less enchanted with it than Israel or the United States are. The fact that you don’t see it does not mean that I am naive, it merely means that we see different things and come to different conclusions. This is legitimate, and there is no need to demean one another.
ISRAEL: No civilian casualties in Gaza!
by: mattes
Sun Dec 28, 2008
http://www.freespeechzoneblog.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2014
Rattling the Cage: Accept Hamas’s offer
http://www.freespeechzoneblog.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1970
You’re well to comment in them. Sometimes I don’t crosspost.
“if the Palestinians broke the cease-fire, Israel could reimpose the siege…“
That would, of course, be collective punishment, which is a war crime.
Oooops! Israel has already been committing that particular war crime more or less continuously and on multiple fronts for – oooooooh, since about 1948.
Year In Review, Part 1 of 4
Year In Review, Part 2 of 4
Maybe I missed it, but I can’t find any condemnation of the incessant rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. Of course, we realize that any Israeli response to the murder and attempted murder of its citizens beyond a sternly worded letter is “disproportionate” – as if tit-for-tat proportionality was a reasonable or workable national security policy – but I’m just saying that waylaying the response while ignoring the provocation seems a bit unfair to me.
But that’s me.
Oscar,
I blame Israel for the rocket attacks. Happy now?
No, nor am I surprised.