Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

[Supercilious]

Re: Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

Has anybody heard about the unorthodox (haredi) jewish organization called Neturei Karta . A youtube search for Neturei Karta can lead to surprising results ...;)

I have a very good haredi friend. When I first met him and he started talking ... I couldn't believe my ears

Re: Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

Rajiv - With respect, Gideon Levy's observations are grossly disingenuous. Ever since the six day war, Israel has quite consciously institutionalized the strategy of disproportionate response, for very good reasons. The political geography surrounding them to a depth of three or four countries in every direction is Muslim, and the Jewish state is an anathema and an artificially manipulated "casus belli" to all of them with the possible exceptions of Turkey, Egypt and Jordan. All the rest would sit on their hands if a local war turned the tables and threatened to overrun the Jewish state in their midst. This state also has no geographic depth. At it's thinnest, it has virtually zero strategic geography between it and the Mediterranean Sea.

You are far too well read and well informed a contributor here for any jot of this data to be lost on you, therefore the only conclusion left is that you post this article disingenuously, because you know full well that since the 1960's Israel formalized as an essential part of it's geopolitical stance in the region, a standard policy of "overresponse" as the only tool available to it to impress upon it's neighbors, that any hostilities against Israel would be met by double the response, expressly in order to instill in them that attempts to wipe out this lone non-Muslim state in the region would be rendered of a very poor "cost-benefit-analysis".

This was an entirely rational policy tailored to meet the needs of A) by far the smallest nation in the region geographically, B) the sole non Muslim nation, against which wars such as the six day war had pitted fully four to five other neighbors, C) a nation which had never sought to foment a new war with it's neighbors, but had always had to justify it's continuance by force rather than by reason or negotiation, precisely because reason and negotiation were forms of dialogue which all her neighbors have been utterly contemptuous of for 60 years with the sole exceptions of Jordan and Egypt.

Regarding the core issues complicating "lasting peace" for Israel within the Arab sphere of nations, the "Plight of the Palestinians" was given great fanfare, with huge cynicism by those same Arab nations. Meanwhile the Israelis themselves offered Arafat practically everything he asked for, at Camp David, in a wholly contiguous Palestinian State, with strategic water resources, ingress and egress, a whole and consistent Palestinian State - with no "funny tricks" or "traps".

The Israelis would have been delighted and profoundly relieved to have resolved this core issue to their permanence in the ME, but Arafat denied it to them on technicalities to do with 2% of the original demands. What is patently obvious, is that he would have denied it to them had they offered him 100% of his demands, because 2% as the crux of a failed agreement is rubbish to serious negotiators.

I really protest your cited article's mis-characterization. Yes, the Israli's have grown to become a small regional superpower and this has very deftly been commandeered to charicature them as the over-armed "bully in the region" - but the characterization as the neighborhood bully is so disingenuous of history as to render it's proponents highly suspect of opinions tainted by pure knee-jerk ideology, IMO. There is no shortage of Socialist leaning merciless critics of Israel among the Jews living there. Proponents such as yourself who fasten on their pronouncements are demonstrating some degree of a-historicism in the process. What depresses me about the Socialist International is the way all these people sort of line up thinking all in unison, in cookie cutter stereotypes. They remind me of iron filings dumped before a magnet. All point rigidly in the same direction.

My respectful suggestion to you, is to be more multi-dimensional in understanding the history of WHY Israel developed a national strategy of "overwhelming and disproportionate response". It is painstakingly described and substantiated, in ALL the historic analysis of the region. All you have to do is be willing to include it honestly and impartially in your reading, and digest the essential significance of why it emerged in the first place. And no, none of this is an endorsement of the children and innocents dying there now. The dangerously simplistic manipulations of insight rather, lie in either sincerly seeking, or actively obfuscating, who have in fact been the most active contributors to this outcome.

Here is what Gideon Levy a prominant Israeli journalist had to say in Haaretz The neighborhood bully strikes again

[Rajiv]

Re: Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

Here is what Gideon Levy a prominant Israeli journalist had to say in Haaretz

The neighborhood bully strikes again

Israel embarked yesterday on yet another unnecessary, ill-fated war. On July 16, 2006, four days after the start of the Second Lebanon War, I wrote: "Every neighborhood has one, a loud-mouthed bully who shouldn't be provoked into anger... Not that the bully's not right - someone did harm him. But the reaction, what a reaction!"

Two and a half years later, these words repeat themselves, to our horror, with chilling precision. Within the span of a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, the IDF sowed death and destruction on a scale that the Qassam rockets never approached in all their years, and Operation "Cast Lead" is only in its infancy.

Once again, Israel's violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom.
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[FRED]

Re: Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

globalresearch.ca is the Canadian home of Leftist and anti-semitic propaganda. I wouldn't rate their 'findings' very highly.

They are not high on our list for that reason.

[Chris]

Re: Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

globalresearch.ca is the Canadian home of Leftist and anti-semitic propaganda. I wouldn't rate their 'findings' very highly.

[D-Mack]

Re: Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

IAF strike followed months of planning

By Barak Ravid

Tags: gaza, israel news

Long-term planning, meticulous intelligence-gathering, secret discussions, visual deception tactics and disinformation preceded operation "Cast Lead" which the Israel Air Force launched yesterday in Gaza to take out Hamas targets in the Strip.

The disinformation effort, according to defense officials, took Hamas by surprise and served to significantly increase the number of its casualties in the strike.

Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well.


Barak gave orders to carry out a comprehensive intelligence-gathering drive which sought to map out Hamas' security infrastructure, along with that of other militant organizations operating in the Strip.

...

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050448.html

nothing new here

Global Research Editor's Note

While the Western media remains silent and complicit, the Israeli Press (Haaretz) reveals the unspoken truth: the careful planning of a military operation entitled "Cast Lead" coupled with a media disinformation and diplomatic campaign. What we are witnessing is genocide. Let us be under no illusiions, this operation was implemented with the knowledge and approval of Israeli's allies.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=11521

[ax]

Re: Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

Why is this country even allowed to exist anymore?

"Hey, they shot some rockets at us and damaged some of our buildings, so let's just destroy their entire country and murder their duly elected leaders, but as long as we get them it's ok if we take out innocent civilians in the process".

[sarcasm]Yeah, that makes sense![/sarcasm]

No wonder so many people and other leaders around the world are so Anti-Semitic. The Israelis just seem to always be hell-bent on causing death, destruction, and committing war crimes against their neighbors (Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, etc).

One of these days, a major country is going to get fed up (like Iran) and will try and retaliate for these crimes in a major way. At this point, based on what all Israel is done, in my opinion they *deserve* to have one or both eyes blackened, if not outright gouged out of their skulls. Same goes for the US. Im sick and tired of all the BS that we engage in around the world and it's time for it to stop.

"Why is this country even allowed to exist anymore?"

No reason you should be any different from the rest of the anti-Semitic world, Ricket. To imply that Israel has suffered no loss of innocent lives is ludicrous. I guess launching rockets from the border and hiding in the basements of civilian buildings is the noble thing to do. Just waiting for your thread on how Madoff is the source of all the market's problems next...

[BiscayneSunrise]

Re: Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

But to me, just giving up and saying "Oh well, since we cant talk, were going to just shoot at our enemise" is much more "morally bankrupt". And again, anyone who uses violence as a means to a social/political agenda is a criminal and should be treated as such, regardless of what entity that it originates from. In this case, Isreal is just as guilty as Palestine in committing war crimes and I just never hear anything from any mainstream media outlet who recognizes that both sides are to blame. The United States or the UN, or SOMEONE who has any kind of military needs to send in armed forces immediately to keep the peace as both sides (Israel and Palestine) have completely lost the capability of mediating this crisis.

In essence, it's time for both sides to admit they have a problem and they need to ask for counseling and assistance from other countries.

But we do talk. And talk and talk and talk. Diplomacy is about talking but it is also about posing distasteful alternatives to the person you are negotiating with. There is a reason why the eagle on the American seal carries both an olive branch and arrows.

Virtually, all of the leaders of the Arab world have accepted Israel's right to exist, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi, etc. Did you know, for instance Israel has an embassy in Qatar? Even Syria is negotiating a peace treaty with israel. For some reason Hamas hasn't gotten the memo. If Israel is the villian here, where are the condemnations from the Arab League or from the various Arab foreign ministers, where are the formal war crime charges?

Their silence is deafening.

[jtabeb]

Re: Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

JTabeb,

It is the 10% that make the world unlivable for the 90% -- For a deeper understanding, read "Political Ponerology" Understanding that 10%, and recognizing them for what they are, and taking appropriate actions to safeguard yourself and others like you, could be the only way for this world to become a better place to live!

Know about the 10% and protection, can't figure out how to get ride of the damn sons-a-bitches.

[ricket]

Re: Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

snip

There was not a single ounce of disingenousness in my post. I meant every word of it. To imply that I am morally bankrupt shows that you really dont know who I am or how I think. I do understand that the only way you can gather that understanding is by what I say on here...

By no means did I ever place no blame on Hamas or it's actions. My only statement was that the response was quite lopsided. Even though Hamas has shot hundreds (it's not thousands, reports show only a few hundred since the cease fire ended), Israel retaliated with a level of violence on a much higher order of magnitude than was warranted. The term "Cruel and Unusual Punishment" comes to mind here.

My only argument is that given the facts on the ground, a much more rational set of policy actions would have done a much more effective job and would have done so without angering the entire Muslim community around the world. Why is massive, wide-scale bombing of hundreds of targets necessary in this event, just to snuff out a few hundred rocket firings that hadnt even killed anyone yet (edit: only 1 Israeli has died in the rocket attacks which intensified AFTER the initial assualt).

Let's put this into perspective. If a serial killer murders a woman, is it the right thing to do to go to his hometown and execute everyone who is related to the killer including anyone that also lives in the same town? How are those people responsible for his actions, and why should they be punished when there are completely viable and workable alternatives to be had? Anyone backed into a corner will listen to their demands being heard, whether they are legitimate or not, many times, just coming to the table and letting them state their grievances is enough to pacify them to allow both parties to come to a workable solution.

But to me, just giving up and saying "Oh well, since we cant talk, were going to just shoot at our enemise" is much more "morally bankrupt". And again, anyone who uses violence as a means to a social/political agenda is a criminal and should be treated as such, regardless of what entity that it originates from. In this case, Isreal is just as guilty as Palestine in committing war crimes and I just never hear anything from any mainstream media outlet who recognizes that both sides are to blame. The United States or the UN, or SOMEONE who has any kind of military needs to send in armed forces immediately to keep the peace as both sides (Israel and Palestine) have completely lost the capability of mediating this crisis.

In essence, it's time for both sides to admit they have a problem and they need to ask for counseling and assistance from other countries.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

inflitration of civilian comunities to exploit the moral conundrum is a classic insurgency tactic

Good post. Thanks.

Perhaps the day will come when the United States Secretary of State, rather than admonish Israel to avoid causing civilian casualties, instead admonishes Hamas not to launch rocket attacks from civilian enclaves, not to send in civilians as suicide bombers, not to build car bombs in factories in civilian enclaves, and not to hide behind the skirts of women and swaddling clothes of infants when shooting at the enemy.

I remain certain that if Hamas and associates put down their arms for good, we could have peace in the Middle East within the week. If Israel put down its arms, we might also have peace, after the second Holocaust had concluded.

[Sapiens]

Re: Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

Why it is a foolish delusion to believe one can coexist in peace?

BillBoard,

Because the condition is external to the believer’s volition. In other words, one may want to coexist in peace, but someone else may not want to coexist with you and may decide to attack you. You can either repel the attack or acquiesce to the other’s volition. It is delusional because it would be to deny the physical reality that one occupies time and space and foolish because one would choose to believe others will also deny the physical reality.

Does that answer your question?

-Sapiens

Re: Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

Tell me, sir, what then are the right proportions of killing in a war between mortal enemies? I do not find comfort in the death of innocents and children but neither you nor I are able to force the hand of history. The tides of nations and peoples are far more powerful than the individual actors within them. The nation of Israel, like the Jewish people before them, faces an existential threat, and unlike the Europeans, will fight for the continuation of their peoples. I, as a Christian of Palestinian descent, will support them. Respectfully, that is all I wish to say on this topic at this forum.

Chris -

Appreciate your no frills and down to earth comments on the roots of this conflict. With regard to the predominance of Judeo-Christian roots in all stable and truly democratic political systems, I am sort of in synch with you but not 100%. There are multiple Latin American countries that put the lie to the notion that Christianity fosters socio political systems with a naturally democratic center of gravity. Certainly however from a Woman's perspective the Judeo-Christian system provides notably greater safeguards than does practically any other major religious grouping worldwide. That much should be beyond dispute to even the most foggy minded intellectualized interpretation. Rickets interpretation of the venality, bloodthirstiness, core lack of scruple and prime warmongering agent attributes of the Israelis is a real eye opener.

I grew up in Italy in an overwhelmingly leftist school and university environment. Friends in Germany and France and Holland were very much steeped in the same profoundly ingenuous internationalist "gestalt". I therefore had this type of convoluted "internationalist" viewpoint shoved down my throat and dinned into my ears shrilly for many years, until I simply became inured to it.

What these fashionable keffiyeh wearing European university students shied away from with an almost comical blindness was any inkling of an idea that such blanket condemnations of Israelis to the exclusion of all others in the region had all the hallmarks of professional Soviet disinformation campaigns oozing out of it. It's not as if the Russians did not have vested interests among the Syrians, Palestinians and the entire populist Arab street to foster. No-one has played the Palestinian question more cynically than Russia with Syria as it's primary client - tool in the region. To have grasped that reality was more complex than this - the reductio ad absurdum that Israel / Zion were the primary agents of all the strife in the region (since the days of Ben Gurion and even earlier apparently) was evidently too herculean an intellectual leap for these idealistic and politically polarized university students.

You could liken their grasp of the full ramifications, to a woefully short legged, but gallantly trotting Lippinzaner pony, tasked with leaping over the trestle of conceptual understanding that there were vested interests in keeping the Israeli / Palestinian question in a state of permanent non-resolution, to serve other great power ends. This perennially baulking Lippinzaner with the short legs was the embodiment of their grasp of international affairs - baulking every time it tried to jump over that trestle. To the best of my knowledge, these otherwise well educated Italian socialist and communist university students (very smart and charming people, otherwise!) remained steadfastly mired, for decades afterwards, in this misconception of the extent of "brazen Israeli iniquity" and the innate evil of the Israeli / American cabal to subjugate the entire region and put it on a slavish leash to the United States.

I used to get steamed about this tripe. Now all I can do is muster a wan smile. I would invite all who feel bursting indignation at the predation of the Israelis on Gaza, to contemplate the state of their indignation here in the US, had we receved a thousand missiles lobbed into our territory from Canada in the past year.

How long are these poor idiot Israelis supposed to sit on their hands issuing one rhetorical warning after another to Hamas while they dare not fire so much as a flare in retaliation for fear of international outcry? How long do they sit there with the missiles raining down,while asking HAMAS to either desist from such endlessly repetitive overt acts of war, or come to the negotiating table and bargain for peace seriously. They offered Arafat 98% of everything he asked for at Camp David, and for Arafat personal pride (or was it merely his core urge to remain perennially a leader with "emergency powers" as in peacetime he'd have risked being voted out?) was more important than compromising on the remaining 2% in order to win a genuine respite for his people, who were crying out to him for a chance to at least start building something resembling a nation. Hamas meanwhile make Arafat's prima-donna performance in squandering every scrap of opportunity from the Camp David accords, look like the soul of reasoned compromise.

Incidentally 09/11 was selected as the terror date on the WTC because it is the anniversary of Camp David attempts to have Arafat and Begin finally close the chapter on endless Arab / Israeli war. If that does not inform observers that there is a very broad and deep enmity to any eventual peace from the radical Muslim side, no other fact can. The destruction of the World Trade Center was a statement against Palestinians ever gaining a homeland short of the removal of any trace of an Israeli state. Tough slog for the Israelis to find some negotiating grounds in that position, eh? And the real point is, it's a far, far tougher slog even for the Palestinian people, with such "visionaries and statesmen" at the helm of their fledgling state.

BTW - Israeli paramedics routinely volunteer and are available to provide emergency services for all critical care which they are called to in Gaza, peacetime or not. Of course the paradox is that one eigth to one quarter of the time the injuries are due to Israeli retaliations after they've submitted to a few hundreds (or is it thousands?) more Hamas missiles fired into Israel, drearily breaking the last truce - a not inconsiderable part of the time instead in the past, the bloodshed within Gaza was occurring when Hamas and Fatah gunslingers were slaying or otherwise imaginatively garotting each other (see Amnesty International's reporting on the highly revealing horrors which occurred within those internal feuds). The point remains that your average North American or European, not to speak of nations such as the immensely territory-proud Chinese, or Indians or Pakistanis, or Iranians, would not tolerate a single missile fired into their territory from any neighbor without considering it instantly an act giving them free rein to reciprocate. One missile fired into one's land by the "government" in a neighboring country is internationally considered at least a technical legal grounds for their retaliation.

The sheer parody, of the world emotionally decrying the occasional spasmodic Israeli reactions to thousands of missiles lobbed day and night into their territory is comical to behold. Comical in an ugly way, frankly.

In recent years, the Israelis routinely put up with thousands and their Prime Minister was discredited in part, precisely for insisting that they NOT retaliate. Evidently to label them bloodthirsty and without even a minimum of scruple is not only a cruel, but also a thorougly specious and pernicious caricature. Ricket needs to take an altogether less ingenuous look at the "moral, wise and unfailingly scrupulous international community" who regard entites like Hamas as A) blameless, and B) worthy of being called statesmen for their people - while the Israelis are labeled bloodthirsty warmongers with a regularity that is so monotonous as to become essentially a morally bankrupt argument in it's own right. So Chris, your own comments appear to me in contrast sober, and are much appreciated. People coming from my viewpoint do not absolutely want to shortchange the Palestinians. But they need to boot Hamas leaders the hell out, and then come with toughness but also with real seriousness, to the bargaining table. I bet they could still get 100% of what Arafat was bargaining for at Camp David, or even better, for a serious lasting peace.

Chris explains his misgivings about governments devised from dandified rationalizations for a "utilitarian" political philosophy. I agree. If ever there was a wretched and dangerous core core guiding principle by which to radically restructure the world's governments, it would be a political philosophy stripped down to "utilitarianism". That and of course governments where ultimate power rests in an ecclesiastical or religious cadre, which is the most horrifically dangerous of all concoctions. You are spot on in this observation.

It matters a great deal, Sapiens, and that is exactly what is missing from all these discussions of the conflict. I do not often quote from intellectuals to explain my point but in this case I must choose one from the political philosopher and champion of liberal democratic pluralism, Jurgen Habermas;

Habermas speaks as a Western atheist intellectual and hence focuses on Christianity, but anyone who has studied and understood the religious foundations of the West will see that Judaism and Christianity must co-exist, one with the other. Many Christian and Jewish theologians (Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, etc) have covered this in great detail (if you are interested in seeing what they have to say).

As this is an economics forum, I will leave it at that, except to say that for most enlightened liberal atheists this conflict and it's analysis often come down to simple utilitarian calculus and hence miss the point entirely. For a larger majority in this world I suspect it signifies something much deeper even if most can not (or will not) articulate it.

___________________


Ricket is demonstrating great ingenuousness in concluding that an organization such as Hezbollah or Hamas, on Israel's doorstep, do not actively engage in nesting their paramilitaries quite intentionally within residential households to fully implement the "human shield" component. Ricket would broaden the substantiality of his moral objections to all wars which involve civilians, by noting that inflitration of civilian comunities to exploit the moral conundrum is a classic insurgency tactic and it has long been expressly designed to PARALYZE the opponents capacity for response. The Israeli contortions around this checkmate strategy have been notable in all the Arab/Israeli wars to date. To decry the "moral horror" Ricket, while engaging in elaborate disingenousness on this point detracts from credibility.

And I would suggest to KGW that he examine maps evidencing the Palestinian populations of Syria and Jordan also, insofar as the larger percentage of Palestinians were residing within those nations in 1947. What has become of them? Do they enjoy full enfranchisement within Jordan and Syria today? What a "conundrum" that the international community ha never uttered so much as a mouse squeak on the predicament of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in makeshift communities within those countries, eh? 60++ years after the creation of Israel, countless Arab Israeli wars, endless tall sounding expressions of grief and concerfn for the plight of the Palestinians from Syria and Jordan, and the Palestinians are still second class transients within their own nations? I smell bunk.

These are countries within the Arab league, who vociferously champion "the plight of the Palestinians" yet they don't fully settle them in-country, and when wars break out, they turn refugees from Palestine AWAY rather than accept more into their own countries. How do we spell hypocrisy?

[BillBoard]

Re: Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

Why it is a foolish delusion to believe one can coexist in peace?

[KGW]

Re: Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192



Who can tell me that "religion" has something to do with this? Someone who does not know the origin or history of Zionism?