No humor here. This is the sad truth. Well, actually, it isn’t. If Israel continues its current slaughter in Gaza, there won’t be any Gazans left to imprison. More than 1,000 dead so far, including hundreds of women and children. This is not pinpoint bombing by Israel. This is not just destroying Hamas tunnels. This is destroying the Palestinians in Gaza. We all know what precision bombing is, and this isn’t it. This is more like shooting fish in a barrel.
Netanyahu doesn’t care. He wanted an excuse to destroy Hamas once and for all and now he’s intent on doing just that. If some civilians get in the line of fire, well, they’re just Palestinians, after all. Why bother with “knock on the roof” bombs when the people have no place to run. You don’t use flechette shells — an antipersonnel weapon — to blow up tunnels. The Guardian reported their use in Gaza last week.
There won’t be any peace. Netanyahu doesn’t want it. He’s made that clear by continuing his West Bank land grab via the continued building of illegal settlements. As long as there’s no peace, he’ll keep building the settlements — and eventually a two-state settlement will be moot because there will be no land left for the Palestinians.
Israel is fighting a war of attrition and it expects to win, even if it means killing hundreds of civilians. It has superior numbers, superior firepower, superior defenses, most of it compliments of the U.S. Our government is supplying more arms and foreign aid to Israel than to any other nation in the world. Thirty percent (30%!) of our foreign aid goes to Israel.
No, Hamas is not blameless, not by a long shot. But the whole world can see this is not even close to a fair fight. In fact, it looks more like ethnic cleansing.
It is despicable for Hamas to use human shields, but it is even more despicable for Israel to fire on them.
Yes, there’s no longer much difference. Continuing to kill Palestinians at the rate of 200 to every dead Israeli is something much more than just “eliminating the tunnels” or “stopping the rockets.” It’s appalling that one of the world’s most sophisticated militaries can’t find a better way to accomplish its goals than indiscriminate massacre.
Netanyahu is speaking on CNN as I type, talking about Hamas using its “terror tunnels” to enter Israel, get to its schools, and kill its children. (So I guess he thinks killing Palestinian children is a fair response.) Anybody of a “right mind” understands what Israel needs to do. (That leaves me out.) The US would “act the same way” if faced with an enemy using human shields. (I doubt that.) “We don’t target civilians.” (They don’t seem to be targeting at all.)
Why is it that when Jews fight back all of a sudden it becomes reprehensible. Since the dawn of recorded history the world looked the other way when Jews were the target of genocide and mass murder. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it’s the Jews that are the bad guys. Believe it when I say that with every innocent civilian death in Gaza, the Hamas leaders smile. All THEY have to do to stop the fighting is to stop shooting rockets at Israel. The people of Gaza voted these people in over a more moderate leadership. They are getting what they paid for.
It’s not all of a sudden. Israel lost my support when they started building illegal settlements in the West Bank.
Mr. Cooper, suppose some crooks lived in your neighborhood, and they kept shooting at passing cars, and the police — after decades of trying to stop it — decide to destroy the whole neighborhood and kill anyone who happens to be in the way.
It sounds — at least to me — like the U.S. Army’s Vietnam rationalization: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
If anything, PIEDTYPE is being generous with “reprehensible.” The Israeli government’s actions are, by all known standards, war crimes. Netanyahu and his “defense” staff should be tried as war criminals.
What a coincidence you should mention “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” I’ve had the same thought recently.
Yes, and apologies for posting twice – WordPress sent me away to sign in after the first post, and I didn’t see it when I arrived back.
You’re welcome to post as often as you like. And I like that second post. Sorry about the WordPress rebuff. Only your first post should be moderated; thereafter they should appear with no delay.
WP has a steep learning curve, at least for me, and my Remington portable doesn’t help. Your site is magnificent. Great work – design and content.
Oh you still have your old Remington!? I’m envious. I’d give anything to still have the old Royal portable that I started on.
Yes, WP is a lot more complex now than it was when I started here about seven years ago. It’s a wonderful platform, though, once you get the hang of it.
Pardon me if I swoon over your compliment. It means a lot coming from someone with your background. Thank you.
Mr. Cooper, et. al., — suppose some crooks lived in your neighborhood and, for years, have been shooting off a few rounds at passing cars. You know, just for fun on a Saturday night. But every time you call the police, the crooks run away and hide. So, eventually, the police get fed up and destroy the whole neighborhood, killing a few innocent residents. What’s a little collateral damage if it solves the problem? After all, cops are only human, and how much can one man (or group of police officers) take? Three or four years from now, it will all be forgotten, right?
No nation, no matter how aggrieved, is permitted to wage war against civilian noncombatants. The fact of the matter is that these indiscriminate actions of Netanyahu and his “defense force” are war crimes, and he and his accomplices should be tried as such. “An eye for an eye” does not justify the slaughter of children.
Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
It’s good enough for me
Makes me love everybody
It’s good enough for me
It was good for Hebrew children
And it’s good enough for me
It was tried in the fiery furnace
It’s good enough for me
It will do when I’m dying
It’s good enough for me
It can take us all to heaven
It’s good enough for me
Oh, the irony.
As John Lennon wrote, “Imagine no religion … “
The sad reality of the Israeli-Palestine conflict is that it is not about religion. It is about the mundane issue of land ownership. The various Western-led, ham-handed partitionings of Palestine, dating to the late 19th century, are the root cause of this latest outbreak of violence.
Extremists in what passes for leadership in the Hamas organization certainly do try to justify their acts of violence against their Israeli neighbors by using a religious imprimatur, because it has more motivational value among the Palestinian citizens of the Gaza than a real estate dispute.
Although the religions are different, I’ve never thought of it as anything other than a land dispute.
With all due respect, I submit that the Israeli-Palestine conflict is much more than a land dispute, and that it is religious hatred that makes the difference. Many real estate disputes occur in the world without one of the parties vowing to kill all members of the other, including the recruitment of suicide bombers. I found this interesting narrative of the history of the conflict. If nothing else, it forms rational talking points – not that rationality is likely to make any difference.
Other than its biased point of view, that article is about the same as the other histories I’ve read. And it still boils down to a war over land. “Jew” and “Muslim” might just as easily be “Ukrainians” and “Russians” or “Tribe A” and “Tribe B” or any other two factions fighting over land. I keep thinking all this sounds a bit like what would happen if somebody decided to kick all the current inhabitants out of Oklahoma and give it back to the Indians.
All I know is what I read in the paper. Back in the days when mine was a real newspaper, instead of a few ages of crab wrapper, we had correspondents in the Middle East. I knew some of them, and they seemed to be reasonably intelligent fellows when they were sober. Even back in the 1890s, they obeyed the Big Boss’s rule not to drink until after sunset.
Anyway, a lot of their reports included examples of persecution of Jewish people by Christians, frequently resulting in Muslims and other non-religious Arabs sheltering them, taking them in (so to speak), providing some places for them to live while the Christians, mostly from Britain, carved up the Eastern Mediterranean region to suit themselves. Religion, it was reliably reported, appeared not to matter.
I don’t doubt your experiences at all and am glad to receive them. Nor am I in denial that the British Empire made a hash of dividing up the Ottoman Empire. Nor do I deny that Muslims can be as variable in their humanity or lack of it as Christians. Lots of Nazis were professed Christians. None of this, however, changes my mind about what is going on collectively in the Middle East now.
Let’s say you have in your basement a violent man and his family, and he tries daily to send poison gas through the vents that could kill you. And let’s say he has vowed that even if you give him food and part of the house, he says he will still try to kill you unless you go away and leave him all the house.
PT is right that the link I provided is written from a biased viewpoint, but the account contains a basic timeline of events and facts that are still convincing to me. Maybe someone can disprove some of them, I don’t know. Maybe the account that some Jews purchased land from Arab owners. But it would probably be a pointless exercise. Reasoning was left behind a long time ago.
Thanks again for sharing your experience.
Oh, I agree the issue is religion if you look at the Middle East chaos as a whole. But I still think the Israeli-Palestinian thing is over land.
All respect, sympathy I felt for the Jewish people is now dead and gone, they deserve none, to my mind they are now nothing more than paranoid killers sustained and seemingly encouraged in the most part by having the United States of America as their great friend and ally; sitting in their corner.
The temerity of the then Mr Balfour in his declaration to Lord Rothschild is breathtaking,but obviously the Jews have no qualms about excluding Balfour’s proviso “..it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”
We English with this declaration in a sense took Palestine from the Palestinians and gave it to the Jews without consulting the Palestinians or even caring or considering the ramifications to them.
Another sorry day in English history and the United States may well join and hang their head in shame with them for their continued support and encouragement of the Jews.
I could understand our supporting a fledgling nation, helping them get established, etc. But they’ve demonstrated time and again that they are more than capable of defending themselves and indeed often thumb their noses at us. Beats me why we keep helping them. I read one article saying it was all because AIPAC is so powerful in Washington, but I hate to think that’s the only reason.
Balfour’s proviso was the right and proper thing to do. Too bad it’s been completely ignored.
I think it is no longer necessary for anyone to wait “until all the facts are in”. Clearly, the Western colonialists have been trying to shove square pegs into round holes for the last hundred years, and the results have been what most people with any common sense could have predicted.
It troubles me, Lord B, that you condemn all Jewish people for the decisions and actions of the leaders of the government of Israel. I said earlier that I think Mr. Netanyahu and some of his cabinet members should be subjected to the gravest possible punishment; PiedType began this thread with a powerful word, “reprehensible”, and that is precisely what wanton, indiscriminate, deliberate slaughter of noncombatant unarmed civilians is, even if it occurs in the midst of a war zone.
The civilized (if that still is a word with any meaning) nations of the world once agreed such action is criminal, and long ago established a process for holding offending individuals accountable, and that is what should be done with Mr. Netanyahu and his accomplices.
Unfortunately Mr Menchen I haven’t seen any report from Israel of the people raising their voices in abhorrence at what the government is doing in their name; this indicates to me the tacit approval, per se, of the Israelis.
There may well be those against the senseless slaughter that is going on but they are strangely silent and until such time as I hear them raise their voices or rise up against Mr. Netanyahu and his cohorts then I see no reason to change my views and I regret that such views cause you trouble and I assure you they also trouble me.
Your point about the apparent lack of concern among the Israeli electorate is well taken.
Some are trying to raise their voices and are being silenced.
p.s. – I want to add that I am very disappointed by President Obama’s apparent lack of outrage over the Israeli “defense” force’s actions. I hoped, especially in this one case, he would allow morality to take precedence over political considerations. I certainly know what my response would be, if I were the president of the United States, and I am willing to say that it would, at least, leave a lasting memory.
Pres. Obama doesn’t get outraged about anything. “No Drama” Obama, remember? There are times I wish he would raise his voice, pound his fist, etc. This is one of those times. But alas, it’s also an election year …
Nothing works right when we elect presidents who either are smarter or stupider than we are. Every damn time. Never fails. The last one who knew what he was doing was Ike.
…maybe I should have said the last honest one…
Yep, I liked Ike.
To digress slightly I think “Ike” made a better President than soldier, but I must admit I did like the man.
Ike received a lot of criticism from his cohort of general officers in Europe, American and British as well, and several times he offered to yield command to any of them who wanted the job of Supreme Allied Commander. Obviously, no one replaced him. It is anyone’s guess why not.
One anecdote, related by Ike’s grandson: in the aftermath of the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy asked Ike to meet at Camp David for an after-action review. Young David Eisenhower later asked Ike if he would have approved the invasion if he had been in Kennedy’s place, and Ike replied, “Of course not. I don’t run bad invasions.”
johnthecook…and then there is the “Promised Land”,and I don’t think it was a temporary promise,even though Israel has failed to meet the conditions.