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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
beginning of the cease fire, and November, Palestinian extremists lobbed a few homemade rockets into the border regions of Israel. No causalities resulted. In the history of uneasy cease fires there are always or nearly always minor provocations perpetuated. This rocket fire could have been classified as such and Israel had a choice. It could have ignored the provocation and held to the larger cease fire. But Israel did not.
In November Israel sent tanks and bulldozers into South Gaza, tearing up agricultural fields and engaging in gun fights with Gazan defenders. Then Israel also reinsitituted the blockade and tightened it, thus breaking one of the major agreements for the cease fire. If the minor provocation of the non-lethal rocket attacks was meant by Palestinian extremists to break the larger cease fire by goading the Israelis, it worked beautifully.
If the Israeli action in November was meant to stop the rocket attacks, it failed miserably, because Palestinian extremists lobbed more rockets and this time killed four Israelis. And Israel has responded by bombing Gaza and filling 500 Palestianian among them children. Is anyone so blind that they can't see how stupid that is? In both cases there was a decision made, there was a choice and yet both times the decision was taken that only leads to more hatred and more killing.
I don't see much virtue in either side at this point. And I see no virtue in supporting either side with our arms or money.
Israeli mortar shells struck outside a U.N. school where hundreds of Palestinians had sought refuge on Tuesday, killing at least 30 people — many of them children whose parents wailed in grief at a hospital filled with dead and wounded.
Do I need to reiterate already?
Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the cognitive narrative of the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda.
or any European journalist has been allowed into Gaza and they're feeling sore about Israel's attempt to control not only everything that moves but also any neutral coverage of this modern-day massacre.
I like your Scots name and you must be very proud of John Logie Baird, the engineer who invented the first working television system. I bet you wear a kilt on St.Andrew's Day.
There is no more right and wrong between Israel and Palestine, only us and them. Each side has completely in/valid claims. Therefore, the only solution is for Israel, with it's greater power, to choose a final solution: either comlete, unconditional independence of the occupied territories, or their complete and total destruction. Their call.
they don't hold up.
The residents of the Gaza territory aren't being held hostage in their territory by the Israelis. If they're unable to emigrate, it's the due to the actions of every other country in the world that doesn't allow the residents to immigrate. Israel has not surrounded Gaza.
They used to occupy the place. They handed the territory over to the residents. I don't get the analogy to Warsaw 1943. The Jews of Warsaw didn't have an outlet to the sea and border access with a nation that, if not exactly an ally, is allegedly non-hostile to its population. The Jews of Warsaw had short supplies of arms and ammunition, and no way to stockpile or resupply. The Jews of Warsaw faced the prospect of imminent annihilation, simply for their presence.
The inhabitants of Gaza, by contrast, seem to have gone out of their way to invite and provoke that kind of reaction, over a period of years. Despite the provocation, I predict that the Israeli military will stop well short of delivering the Gazans to the near-total annihilation that was the fate of the Jews in Warsaw. That forbearance will not stop the foes of Israel from characterizing their action as "genocidal." The number of unarmed civilian casualties is bound to be high. As I noted previously, it's fairly obvious that Hamas has made that part of their tactical design, to fulfill the strategic aim of casting the Israelis as the Villains.
(But Villainy and Heroism is more than simply a power calculation, a matter of "strong - villain" and "weak = heroic." And "Power" needs to be thought of in terms more relevant than abstractions about total military might. The person firing a rocket at random across a national border into a target area comprised of unarmed civilians has Power. The unsuspecting victim who finds themselves within range of the rocket when it explodes has No Power.)
Gaza is evidently dependent on Israel for 80% of its electricity. Why no measures were taken by the Gazans over the past three years to ameliorate that situation isn't clear to me. But the Israelis- who also maintained many businesses in Gaza that provided much of its employment and industrial base- were willing at the outset to supply that power and aid. And after years of repeated captures of smuggled weapons caches and rocket attacks, they've pulled the plug. Why this is somehow seen as wanton cruelty- instead of as a weary reaction to a smoldering fire of mounting terror on its border that the recipients of the aid have continued to fuel- doesn't compute to me.
Far Lefties like Greenwald and Kamiya are always so very predictable. When it suits their lefty worldview, they ignore the fact that all governments have the responsibility to provide basic defense of its citizens. According to their view, Israel should just sit back and take it "up the arse" and hope that Hamas and Hezbollah come to their senses, meet in Geneva and solve the Israeli-Palestinian question, once and for all (time). Not in my lifetime nor in your lifetime is this going to happen.
I have a deep distrust for writers like these guys because what they want is for good people to do nothing while evil triumphs all around them. My only conclusion is that Kamiya and Greenwald must be purveyors of evil as well. Why else would they be so intent on aiding and abetting killers like Hamas and Hezbollah?
Where am I wrong?
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
