One of the “peace activists” aboard the ship of rogues (see above) was also interviewed. He claimed that the Israeli Navy purposely “rammed” their ship (named “Dignity aka “Indignity”). Regev was not allowed to describe who was aboard that ship or to explain that Israel, at war, has still been sending humanitarian aid into Gaza. (On an Israel Project conference call today, Sallai Meridor, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, confirmed that “Sixty three trucks yesterday and ninety trucks today go into Gaza with humanitarian aid.” I would like to thank Faustasblog for this information.)
CNN is also stressing how dense the civilian population is in Gaza–well, why not blame Jordan and Egypt and the rest of the Arab world for refusing citizenship to these poor souls? Or, why blame anyone: Just solve this problem now by allowing those Palestinians who wish to live elsewhere in the Arab Middle East (many of whom have ancestral ties to Egypt, Jordan, and Syria), permission to do so? I am talking about the civilians, not the professional Palestinian terrorists whom no one wants but whom Israel is expected to either live with or ultimately destroy.
MSNBC, gets no kudos for their interview earlier today with Mr. Zbigniew (“The Chief”) Brzezinski. His approach is snake-like, smooth, cunning. I did not watch all of it, (too upsetting, given his potential role in an Obama administration), but I watched long enough to see him say that, while it is true that Hamas “provoked” and “harassed” Israel, “does that mean that punishment on that scale” is right? He also stressed that the Hamas rockets “had not killed anyone.” Brzezinski is hawking a book and he tried to present himself as concerned with the “moral” as well as the “political” dimensions involved. He called for Israel to show a “sense of proportion” and to “limit civilian deaths.”
By Jove, Israel has done just that. It has waited years and allowed its citizens to lead highly circumscribed and traumatized lives, especially in Sderot. Most of the deaths in Gaza were carefully targeted assassinations of Hamas fighters. According to Joshua Mitnick in the Christian Science Monitor, (not a Zionist source), Israel has made 400 sorties into Gaza since Saturday. There have been 370 deaths, 64 of whom are, according to the United Nations (another non-Zionist source), civilians. Thus, Israel has been exquisitely careful.
Of course, although the Christian Science Monitor admits that this is so–they still titled the article “Gazan Civilians Increasingly At Risk in Assault on Hamas” and they recycle interviews with Gazans that are six years old and who then blamed the Israeli military for incurring any collateral damage. (I hate that phrase but the word’s in play, we all know what it means, it is a way of slightly sanitizing such deaths).
But how does one fight a terrorist group, who purposely positions its rockets and weaponry in civilian apartment houses, hospitals, mosques, and schools? Given that this is so, Israel has quite “morally” kept the civilian body count as low as possible. Hamas? They immediately started using their grief-stricken civilians as weapons in their larger war of propaganda which they wage so well in the media. And, according to the Christian Science Monitor, Hamas operatives are now rapidly moving into densely populated civilian areas in Gaza. Their cowardly, life-hating tactic speaks for itself. According to the Monitor:
“Until now Israel has targeted mainly Hamas offices, ministries, and centers of power in a bid to limit collateral damage while still crippling the Islamists’ ability to fire rockets across the border. But as the conflict stretches on and Israeli warplanes and drones seek out Hamas commanders and other militant leaders hiding in neighborhoods in the densely packed coastal strip, it will be harder to contain civilian deaths.”
But, in Orwellian-Speak, “peace activists” are not demonstrating against Hamas for what Hamas is doing to Palestinian civilians. The paradigm is that the “occupied” terrorist is, by definition, always “peaceful,” “moral” and “noble.”
Stay tuned. I will try and post later again about the upcoming pro-Israel demonstrations in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco and perhaps on yesterday’s pro-Israel demonstration in Boston.
NEWSFLASH from Arutz Sheva:
Hamas Missiles Hit Be’er Sheva for First Time
by Gil Ronen
(IsraelNN.com) Be’er Sheva, the Negev’s largest city with over 200,000 residents, came under missile attack just before 9 p.m. Tuesday, for the first time since Israel captured it in 1948.
One of the Grad-type missiles hit a kindergarten that was empty of children. The second one hit an empty field. Both hits were in a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Be’er Sheva.
All this as a missile fell one hour ago in the yard of a kindergarten in central Beer Sheva. If it had not been at night….but who am I kidding. Only Israel commits war crimes.
When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, they were offering independence to its residents. At the time, Israel’s leaders, first Sharon and then Olmert, spoke of a unilateral withdrawal from most of the West Bank. The Palestinians rejected the gift by launching rockets against Israeli civilians. What message were the rockets bearing? They were saying “Reoccupy us! Reoccupy us!” Hamas can’t be bribed with a state. Its members want to do what they think is virtuous—to die in a jihad while killing Jews.
Dear Phyllis
We are up against an insidious system of lies, subterfuge, and false-documentary films worked out again and again–in Jenin,. in Lebanon, in the Mohammed Duras case–and yet the world’s media and the general public are still self-deluded, tricked, and willingly mesmerized by these satanic images.
As a former resident of Be-er Sheva, who can still feel right now the pain and anxiety of the attacks coming closer and closer, I do not see these issues as interesting moral topics and fascinating issues in foreign diplomacy. Jews, always scapegoats, should now have the courage to stand up against all this nonsense.
Thank God for people like yourself and Charles Krautheimer.
Norman
I am glad that there are going to be pro-Israel demonstrations. Perhaps Indian-Americans should make a special point of being there – with signs saying ‘Mumbai salutes the IDF’, ‘Defeat Jihad’, ‘Lan Astaslem’, etc. If I found out there was going to be a pro-Israel demonstration in my hometown in Australia, you can be quite, quite sure I would be there.
In the meantime – perhaps those of us who support Israel should consider 1. flying an Israeli flag, if we have or can get one 2. wearing a Star of David 3. wearing something blue-and-white.
Quick answer for anyone who asks why we’re saying ‘Kol ha-kavod IDF’: the monstrous, genocidally antisemitic and dreaming-of-world-domination nonsense that is enshrined in Hamas’ Charter, and that has been spewing from and into Gaza not for years, but for decades (since at least the 1950s when Nonie Darwish went to school there and was taught to hate Jews; Martha Gellhorn heard it, too, in 1960 when she visited Gaza, then under EGYPTIAN control, and called Gaza a ‘prison’, exposed to, as she put it, ‘the full blast’ of Egyptian Arab Muslim propaganda), is even worse than the monstrous nonsense that poured from Hitler’s Nazi Berlin…and deserves to receive exactly the same treatment. That is: a withering rain of fire.
Why can’t you people just acknowledge that war crimes are taking place?
The Israeli Navy yesterday rammed an aid ship, not once, but three times and called it an accident.
Just like it said the bombing of the USS Liberty was an accident … remember that one?
The ceasefire was originally broken by Israel in the first week of November when the army invaded Palestinian Territory and killed six Gazan men.
You can not dispute the fact but you try and reinvent history just like the Nazis did.
The world stood by silently as the Holocaust happened to the Jewish people and six million were slaughtered. It is not going to happen again.
Never again.
Is there any objective (non-palestinian) reliable estimate of actual casualties? From past experience we know Palestinians routinely exaggerate and lie about casualties. Also, they routinely use womenand children as human shields (willing ones, apparantly) in order to put political and diplomatic pressure on Israel. It would be useful to get some idea of how many casualties Hamas has actually suffered, as opposed to what they put out for propaganda purposes.
On another note, perhaps you can explain why Israel is treating this as a counter-insurgency rather than a war. The Palestinian people voted Hamas into power freely, which means they freely support the Hamas charter calling for the total destruction of Israel. So, why is Israel not using more appropriate tactics, such as what the Russians did to Chechneya after the Beslan atrocity or what Syria did to the Muslum Brotherhood in Hama? Israel has nothing to lose by fighting ruthlessly, the Muslum and European dhimmified peoples cannot hate Jews more than they already do.
It seems the writer is on the hardliner front itself, and frankly she is just playing with words in order to settle her idea, alright Israel is victim of Islamism Jihadist and crazy hard head that don’t understand the Zionist cause all over the Middle East.
What is the End to this atrocity?
You know the result is much more important than these trash talks.
Top bottom is this: Israeli must always live under the instant fear that one day some one would literally wipe them out of the map.
I am an Iranian let me give you a glimpse of very important era of Middle East and lesson that is hidden in it.
Iraq impose a war against us , they done what ever they could and it is so naive to say just the ruler wage a war and there was no support within Iraqi, they all had bloody hands on that war, we lost over a million people just in 8 years ( Deadliest war in that century between two nations)
When Iraq become so called free from its dictator namely Saddam Hussein and Bath party they gone to the weakest of all the time , If we were Israelis we had to do what ever we could in order to take revenge for our millions lost ( I know you may remind me of conspiracy of American Propaganda machine or perhaps scapegoat strategy that Iran is doing what ever it can in order to destabilize Iraq but “When you own something you must be crazy to claim it all the time” , Shiite’s faction by faith and Kurdish by blood are well connected with us and like us they would be scrutinized by Arabs all the time so they are not only strategically our allies but technically they have no other choices so at the end Majority ruling government in Iraq would be naturally the best choice for Iran ; Is that the same thing that American is asking for, at least on the public face ( free and democratic nation)??)
We were the first Nation to send our President into Iraq and open our embassy and open a warm welcome to Iraqi presidential election, beside all this there are lots of Iranian that are wondering why we should be this friendly to Iraqi that murder and rape our people proudly and restlessly.
We done this not just as strategically gesture move but in contrast we did it for the sake of our own future because there is cycle called “Cycle of hate” if you gone in it , it’s not going to end one day and one party become so called winner , yesterday after our revolution we were weak Iraqi take advantage and impose restless war to us today Iraqi are so down and doomed that can be crash like peace of cake , but hold on a second there may be also another term that in future we may become weak again and that time Iraqi would not be on mercy terms toward us …., yes it would be just like “Show must go on”
We call it “Wash blood with blood”
So we did this move in order to secure our future because we are doomed to live with our stupid neighbors – this is De-Facto
I have lots of Jewish friend in my home town Shiraz, they are very smart and cunning but in my surprise Israeli political faction are so much consume by Fanatic stuff flaring by Zionism Ideology that they do not understand and take lesson form this very important “Lesson”!!!!!!!!!!!!
They have to live with these people whether they like or not
As I have commented elsewhere, the Middle East is a conundrum that seems to defy solution, no matter how much sweat and effort is applied. It’s a sort of foreign religious version of the Hatfields and the McCoys, with animosity and cries of “no fair” coming from both sides. I’ve almost always felt that Israel is more victim than victimizer in the various fiascoes over the last 60 years, but frankly the country does occasionally step over the line, and get itself into more trouble than it needs. We here in America know the perils of having dealings with the goofball Arab extremists, like Osama and these clowns from Hamas. Hezbollah in Lebanon is another rogue’s gallery we don’t really need anywhere on the planet.
The ironies and oddities of the situation are numerous. First, Hamas unseated Fatah in the election several years ago because they’re *honest* believe it or not, compared with Fatah. Secondly, the missiles they’re firing into Israel are (according to Hamas) coming from a group they don’t control. Supposedly they run Gaza now, have endless police officers (everyone’s brother-in-law needs a job) and they’re virtual dictators-for-life (homage to Calvin & Hobbes) but they can’t stop the missiles or ever catch who fires them. Believe that?
Another oddity is that you can’t ever, with few exceptions, get any of the real partisans to discuss the casualties their own side is inflicting. Jews and Israelis, at best, will insist that the IDF is trying to limit civilian casualties. That sort of platitude works pretty well with American TV audiences, but how do you think it goes over with the parents of those two little girls killed in the airstrike yesterday, killed because they were near a police station Israel targeted because it was controlled by Hamas? Think they appreciate Israeli efforts to limit civilian casualties? And the typical Arab partisan is essentially shameless in his disdain for the deaths of any Jews killed by the rockets, insisting that there are many fewer. Note that whoever’s firing the rockets from Gaza (remember it’s not Hamas) is just shooting randomly into Israeli residential neighborhoods: there’s no attempt to only target political or military installations. I’ve always wondered what a “proportional” response would be in such a situation. One Israeli gets killed, and so one Arab is volunteered on the other side for martyrdom? Does anyone think that would have any effect?
I have a friend who is pretty hardline about this, insisting that the whole religion of Islam is going to have to go at some point. If they keep this sort of behavior up, at some point I think I agree with him: it’s going to come down to them or us, and I don’t like their chances.
“We desire death as you desire life.” – Hamas Spokesman, Hamas TV, Translated by Memritv.com ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0wJXf2nt4Y – youtube video – h/t Jawa Report).
I think that describes the difference between the morality of Hamas and that of Israel.
All we are doing is trying to clean up the mess we made in 2005 when we left Gaza in the hands of Hamas.
And yet some people have the ignorance to do this
How can we let this pass?
DoubleTapper
DoubleTapper@gmail.com
DoubleTapper, blogging on
Guns Politics Defense from Israel
Yvonne Ridley says: “The world stood by silently as the Holocaust happened to the Jewish people and six million were slaughtered. It is not going to happen again. Never again.” Grammatically speaking she is right: the IDF stands in the way of the Hitler-inspired hatred of the Palestinian Arabs. I know of course that she wasn’t trying to change the subject, that for “six million” and “holocaust” we are supposed to understand what is “being done” to Arabs by Israelis, but this is all part of the mendacious use of words and analogies that the pro-Palestinian Arab cause indulges in. As indeed, in answer to her first question: we people do indeed acknowledge war crimes – but they are being, have been perpetrated by Hamas, Hizbollah, the PLO et al. Jews were derided for not fighting for themselves when massacred by the Nazis – and derided again whey they seek to protect themselves against the Nazi’s heirs. Why indeed no protest against Hamas’s attacks against it’s own civilian population? If dead Arabs are the problem, why only when those Arabs are dead because of legitimate Israeli actions? In other words, dead Arabs are not perceived to be the problem, the world is indifferent to Arab corpses, piled up for decades in the name of national self-rule or Islamic purity. No better demonstration of the antisemitic character of these denunciations of Israel need be looked for. It is also incipiently racist: no one cares about Arabs killing Arabs because that is what they are expected to do….
big yeah re: the Orwellian dictionary. Whenever I hear someone say, “peace” I’m like, oh you mean you don’t like Jews controlling Israel , you ignore and or demonize Jews who die because of Muslim terrorism and you compare Jews/Israeli’s to the nazi’s etc.
Same with when they say “pro-life” it means you don’t think women should control their wombs, you ignore and/or demonize women who die from illegal abortions and you compare women/feminists to nazi’s etc.
If hundreds of thousands of PEACE people had stormed the Gaza and protested the rockets and missiles with the same vehemence they protest Israel violence maybe there would have been peace instead of this war. IF the Palestinians HAmas or whomever took all the time and energy spent on rockets and missiles and bomb belts and terror training and instead did a big Ghandi thing-there would be peace and justice. The problem is they they consider the very existenc of a Jewish land to be inherently unjust from it’s conception.
I would take the “peace activists” somewhat more seriously if a few of them hung out in Sderot as human shields.
The sad fact is if Hamas simply put down their weapons and stopped firing missiles into Israel then Israel would stop their military actions and would live peaceably with their Arab neighbors. That is all that needs to be done. If, on the other hand, Israel were to give up any pretense of defending herself then those same Arab neighbors would come into Israel and slaughter every man, woman and child.
The aid ship rammed was the McKinny pirate ship.
Yvonne Ridley,
… at a rolling donut.
… and the horse you rode in on.
Do your Islamist friends offer you a towel to wipe your mouth when you’re done?
The world stood by silently as the Holocaust happened to the Jewish people and six million were slaughtered. It is not going to happen again.
Never again.
Yeppers. Thanks to the IDF.
the problem is, if “peace” activists really are truly for peace then they need to protest ALL the violence-Muslim as well as Jewish. IF thousands of “peace” activists had inundated Gaza protesting the relentless missile and rockets attacks… and if the “international community” and the UN had roundly condemned HAmas with the same regularity that they condemn ISraeli actions …well maybe there wouldn’t be this war.
Non-violent resistance would work perfectly to correct any injustice suffered by Palestinians. There are a billion Muslims who could have protested BOTH Jewish and Muslim violence and there are millions in the “international community”. So WHERE’s THE PEACE?
The problem is they don’t want peace they want no more Israel. Their Orwellian dictionary would define “injustice” as: Israel’s existence from the moment of conception or birth.
Like any comparison this one will fall short but I see Israel as a kind of national affirmative action. Like affirmative action it is not fair, it unabashedly gives preference to a particular group or groups. And like affirmative action, the purpose is not to oppress but rather to address a longstanding historical wrong. Racism and Jew hatred are BOTH important.
But it’s as if people are choosing to care about racism OR Jew hatred.
It’s like so many of the pro-Israel people here in the USA are Rush Limbaugh “rightwing” types who are not overly concerned about racism (or sexism or homophobia or whatever else I’ve missed)
But then there’s the “leftwing” types who do supposedly care about social injustice and oppression except not only do they not include Jew hatred, they will tell you that the Jewish nation is: colonialist apartheid racist nazi etc etc etc. Completely ignoring Jewish history, suffering spirituality religion and insead fitting us into a neat little box called “politically white”. And just as right wing women can be the most effective anti-women rights activists so too Jews can be simply superb in their anti-Israel efforts. G-d bless em.
I think it’s important to care about ISrael without being blind to racism just as I think it’s important to care about racism without blind to Jew hatred.
And most of all I believe it’s important to care about peace. I don’t like my pro-Israel stance to be synonymous with war. I think one can be for peace AND Israel. I believe that is the end game of Judaism-redemption for ALL of humanity.
But meanwhile back to cold hard reality, there are a billion Muslims and not even twenty million Jews.So a majority rule “democracy” would mean no more Jewish Israel.
And like I said, sadly that is what the “peace” people really want.
To me, this always comes down to the one rhetorical question:
If the Arabs/Muslims surrounding Israel destroyed all their weapons tomorrow, what would the outcome be? Answer: Peace.
If Israel destroyed all their weapons tomorrow, what would the outcome be? War, Invasion, and Genocide.
Alan,
How dare you bring logic into this?
Israel should take a lesson from Russia (Putin). Find your enemies abroad and do ‘em in. Then deny, deny and deny.
Chesler’s morality: Israel can do no wrong.
That’s it, in its entirety.
Corwin said:
Alan,
How dare you bring logic into this?
Silly me. What was I thinking?
Besides, everything will be better after Jan 20th, right?
#15, Ken: spot on. It’s really as simple as that.
Dear Phyllis:
Excellent as usual. And an Evil Yvonne Ridley’s Believe It Or Nut’s as per usual.
IT matters not what Taquyaa Muslims and Marxist Leftards spin. Islam is about nihilism, murder, deception and spreading totalitarian fascist and insane Islam globally.
Mohammad was and always will be a paedophile rapist mass murdering pervert bandit and Jew hater hallucinating as Christopher Hitchens said, the “filth of the Koran” in a lice ridden cave.
The old joke of how do you know when a politician is Lying? Their lips are moving, appliex precisely to Muslims and the Left. No matter what Ridley the freak says, it’s ALWAYS a lie in Taquiyaa speak.
For the last few days I can’t help thinking of our own dhimmi National Security website charged with er, our cultural security etc. NOT once do they mention Islam. In fact they deny completely ANY connection between terror and any particular religion”, all with the threat that you better not too.
Anyway, here’s my laugh filled and monumental take on it.
I’d love to know what you think and if there are other examples. The UK under PM Brownnose must have the same official drivel. Gotta Mister! Israel and the Jewish people owe the world nothing. Not a single apology or explanation. The world owes Israel and the Jewish people almost everything.
All the VERY best Phyllis. Take no crap from anyone and never suffer treasonous fools gladly. Colonel Neville.
http://colonelrobertneville.blogspot.com/2009/01/beyond-belief-and-dangerous-pc.html
‘Barghouti claimed that Israel had begun the aggression “months ago”.
Well, he is absolutely correct, Israel broke the 6 month ceasefire by the IOF killing 6 Palestinians on US election night (a calculated move if ever there was one).
It is obvious that israel provoked the ending of this ceasefire and engineered the present situation.
27. nic) Get your facts straight
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rocket_and_mortar_attacks_in_Israel_in_2008
Way to go Israel….Bomb them to the stone age. The only country with the guts to stand up to world opinion and deal with the muslems the only way they understand. The world is not a safe place with fanatical terrorists in it.
Israel didn’t start this war, but they seem bound to finish it. Send in the troops next.
“Gaza” and “Jenin, Srebrenica, Racak, Sarajevo” are all out of the same propaganda vat. The picture of children killed and wounded in Gaza by Israeli bombs (or US and British bombs in Iraq)is hideous, but ghastlier still is training Muslim kids to become martyrs for Islam and promising civilians that their reward will be great in Paradise if they die as human shields for Hamas fighters. –Hamas marched in Sarajevo, too. The place is now “little Teheran”. Iran armed the Bosnian Muslims: in 1994 I was shown captured Iranian ammunition in Bosnia, by a Muslim officer fighting alongside the Christians against the Islamists (who were supported by Bill Clinton). By the way Ahmedinejad murdered thousands of Muslim children: he organized boys to march across mine fields to clear the way for Islam’s tanks behind them. In Holland nearly a hundred Dutch troops who served in Srebrenica have now come forward to defend Radovan Karadzic. The Dutch Battalion was accused of not defending the Muslims against the Serbs; they were busy defending themselves from the Muslims. On Dutch soldier was “fragged” (killed by a fragmentation grenade) by a Muslim soldoer of Izetbegovic in Srebrenica. See ths following link:
http://de-construct.net/e-zine/?p=4375