Israel to World: "Suck It."

I think if israel was founded on a desire to increase human rights they must've have turned a blind eye towards those who already were living there, much like how america was founded.

― Jacob Sanders, Monday, May 31, 2010 8:43 PM (27 seconds ago) Bookmark

undeniably, but also a lot like other instances of forced expulsions of ethnic groups much closer in place and time to the mandate of the late 1940s -- iraq, egypt, libya, etc

tbf the USA shares almost all the same faults as Israel, although not in quite so glaring a way. In the matter of human rights criticism, it surely acts as a proxy and a buffer state for the USA, as it does in so many other ways.

Being a democracy is pretty important here - means that what happens in this pretty brutal part of the world gets scrutinised in Israel and not so much in other countries. They still crucify and behead people in Saudi Arabia, but you never hear much about it.

Israel's has a good human rights record for its own citizens

Members of this Israeli government have advocated fundamentally reducing the civil/human rights of Israeli Arabs.

From what I understand, the situation in Israel is quite different than say ten years ago. The secular, liberal segment of Israeli society is losing. The orthodox, extremist segment is winning. The "middle" has shifted pretty far right. Democracy in Israel may well be dying.

aipac sent out an email with this subject line:

Subject: Ynet: Israeli troops ambushed at Sea - Ron Ben Yishai details clash aboard Gaza-bound vessel

oh, aipacws

not to be confused with "oh, ws aipac"

wait wait there's no problem gaza's markets are crammed full
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6044639/peace-convoy-this-was-an-islamist-terror-ambush.thtml

This totally reactive, stop-hitting-yourself position sometimes seems like the entire intellectual bedrock of the IDF. "We didn't kill you; you committed suicide by doing something we asked you not to." Just pretending to be robotically morally neutral, agency-free.

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Monday, May 31, 2010 3:23 PM (59 minutes ago)

yeah this is so otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYjkLUcbJWo

Members of this Israeli government have advocated fundamentally reducing the civil/human rights of Israeli Arabs.

From what I understand, the situation in Israel is quite different than say ten years ago. The secular, liberal segment of Israeli society is losing. The orthodox, extremist segment is winning. The "middle" has shifted pretty far right. Democracy in Israel may well be dying.

― Super Cub, Monday, May 31, 2010 8:55 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark

doubt many people would deny that israel has a particularly shitty government right now

but "democracy in israel may well be dying"? really?

xpost. I really enjoyed 'Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present' by Michael B. Oren. yet it concerns it's self with america's involvement with the middle east as a whole. But israel and palestine are both explored in depth in the book.

My dad's been wanting me to read this for a couple of years.

And if the commandos were attacked with bars, (or throwing people off boats at some point in the altercation) how many people do you think you would have to shoot with assault rifles to make them stop?

That's an ugly scene, no doubt. It's totally understandable that the soldiers feared for their lives. IMO, that doesn't change the basic issue. Storming an aid flotilla full of protesters is not okay. It's not an acceptable way of dealing with this situation.

That also looks like a very poorly conceived operation. Dropping soldiers into the arms of an angry mob is not what I'd call a precision, surgical raid.

xpost

And if the commandos were attacked with bars, (or throwing people off boats at some point in the altercation) how many people do you think you would have to shoot with assault rifles to make them stop?

― textbook blows on the head (dowd), Monday, May 31, 2010 9:39 PM (2 seconds ago) Bookmark

what's your answer, to the nearest decimal point?

That also looks like a very poorly conceived operation. Dropping soldiers into the arms of an angry mob is not what I'd call a precision, surgical raid.

indeed, but, well, it's a bit different than the "they landed and opened fire on sleeping civilians" line put out by the convoy earlier

1?

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n16/judith-butler/no-its-not-anti-semitic

one thing, and like sorry if this is totally born out of ignorance on my part, but one of the things that I have never understood abt the yoking of anti-semitism w/ palestine conflict issues is that it seems to me at least to suppress how anti-arab/muslim sentiment might factor into western perception. In a) Israel's seemingly increased responsibility as a comparatively "western" middle eastern country versus a more exoticized Palestine whose cultural strangeness diminishes responsibility, although at the same time b) rendering Israelis more identifiable (for one thing you always meet loads of them staying in youth hostels, i guess american universities) as against the Palestinian population who still feel like a population that is "out there" and whose reality seems somewhat neutralised by cultural difference/geographic distance? Like "is this a thing" is what i mean?

Dropping soldiers into the arms of an angry mob is not what I'd call a precision, surgical raid.

yeah, srsly

That also looks like a very poorly conceived operation. Dropping soldiers into the arms of an angry mob is not what I'd call a precision, surgical raid.

right. I'm not sure what has happened to the IDF's skill in operations--it used to do some fucked up things for sure, but it always managed to carry things out well. Now it just botches everything. idgi.

MPAC keeping things reasonable i see

http://www.mpacuk.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/medium/flotilla_attacked.jpg

Shocking that anyone would confuse anti-Israel sentiment with anti-Semetic sentiment.

http://www.isranet.org/Images/octopus_cartoon.jpg
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/files/2010/03/douglas-murray.jpg

:/

Btw, lol @ Sleeve above calling me an idiot Israel defender a few posts after I quote Arendt on Eichmann (!!) to describe Israel's relationship to Gaza. Like holy shit.

ugh at the swastika. i fucking hate the equating of what israel does with nazism - it's so blatantly anti-semitic.

yeah im not saying its not a thing, just something i don't really understand the roots of (beyond the obvious but still) and wondering how I can understand it w/in a broader elaboration of cultural intolerance etc.

xxp

radio 4 just had SAS novelist andy mcnab on, criticising the idf's tactics: "see, what you want to do is swamp the ship, not drip-feed your soldiers in, get it over quicker, safer for everyone".

plaxico, what's your question? You realize that there's a super long historical history of anti-Semitism that predates Israel's creation by many many years, right?

Ugh at using a fucking octopus again. At least it keeps the brand identity going I guess. The blue octopus is Churchill, by the way - not sure why he gets the star halo, other than it being a nazi poster and therefore maybe not entirely logical.

anti-Semites are critical of Israel =/ criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic

sigh...

Mordy you're the one who said "I hope the troops were fired on" etc., which I read as "I sure hope there was a good excuse for yet another Israeli massacre of civilians, cause if there wasn't then people will get mad at Israel and well of course that means Israel will have to kill even more people". Perhaps I misread you there, but I think there's a lack of perspective in that reasoning.

if there's a civilian death incident where you've failed to argue in favor of Israel I must have missed it, like I said these threads make me really unhappy and I generally stay away from them.

yeah, like I'm not completely retarded, but I guess I think of Jewishness/Israel as separate, largely bc of like aqcuaintance w/ Israelis and also Jewish ppl of various nationalities and it just seems natural to separate them in a way that is more separate than just diaspora/native (like its a weird situ. where the diaspora kind of predates the country itself, but I realise that island living might have simplified my understanding of national borders somewhat) I mean, the mainstream equating of Jewish ppl and Israel feels more gallingly racist than it seems to be received as but again....

Sleeve, I'd prefer if people didn't die. I'm not a big fan of violence in any direction, and I'm not really a fan of deciding whose actions are legitimate and whose aren't. So I was hoping that if the IDF killed those people, as tragic as it is, it wouldn't blow up into a huger much more horrific tragedy. I think it's pretty obvious tho that I don't think it was a positive thing for the world that Israel boarded the flotilla and killed those people. I think you're missing the perspective that limiting violence is a pretty great thing to try and do, even if everything else isn't perfect. There's some kind of belief that if you push the conflict hard enough, eventually it'll get so violent and horrible that a change will have to happen. That might be true, but there are plenty of cases in history where violence didn't lead to good stuff. I'd prefer peace was achieved through peaceful means. At this point, that means hoping that a) the IDF didn't act like psychos randomly killing sleeping civilians and b) that it doesn't escalate even further.

And I'm pretty sure that comparing Israel with Eichmann puts me definitely not in the camp of defending Israel. Unless you're such a hardliner that you think Nazi comparisons are actually too good for them. (I'll admit, I didn't put big flashing NAZI lights out, but I called their approach to Gaza as evil as I think evil comes in the world -- totally self-centered, tribal and thoughtless. I would think you could've read between the lines yourself.)

how does Israel compare with eichmann? i can't see any similarities between how Israel treats Gaza and the holocaust.

I meant in terms of allowing horrific things to happen by virtue of thoughtlessness (that was Arendt's conclusion in Eichmann in Israel -- that evil only exists in one's inability to think through the meaning and consequences of their actions). Yes, totally different designing killing machines and being so thoughtless that you allow the suffering to continue in Gaza without taking drastic steps to alleviate it, or board a ship marked with humanitarian supplies for Gaza. I guess I'm more pro-Israel than a lot of people on ILX because I believe in a Jewish State of Israel (I can't understand how you can be against that but different conversation), so I realize how tricky most situations are in terms of protecting the State. But something like this seems so horrific and thoughtless that it can't be justified. Tbh, Bibi's coalition should be declared unconstitutional and Lieberman shouldn't be allowed in politics. Dude should be working with Livni full-time (she should be in charge imo, but even if not, she should at least be working in the cabinet). The government has totally gone over the edge and acting in just a totally careless, inhumane way.

I also believe Lieberman is actually really a fascist. Without scare-quotes or considerations.

I hate it when I edge closer to the line of thinking of the Free Palestine pamphleteers who lurk outside the underground.

I'm just curious, people like Sleeve + k3v who clearly believe Israel is 100% at fault here -- what exactly do you believe they should have done? Do you believe they shouldn't worry about weapons being smuggled into Gaza for use on border cities like S'derot? Do you think there's a better compromise they can make -- like remove the blockade but set up some kind of inspection organization? Do you think Gaza has the right to weapons to use against Israel, and Israel should just deal with it? (I'm not being disingenuous about the last option -- maybe it's legit. Apparently Margaret Thatcher had a policy of 'acceptable violence' vis-a-vis the IRA, and that seems to have worked out.) Do you think they had a right to the blockade but just handled the actual maneuver incorrectly?

Personally I believe there shouldn't be a blockade. How can you expect a State to organize itself if they can't trade with other State actors? But I don't know how you successfully balance that with national security. I know Israel (and Egypt) offered to let the flotilla dock and have the aid carried from inside Israel or Egypt, but the activists clearly wanted to make a point about the blockade. I assume they believe there should be no blockade, but do they believe Israel shouldn't be concerned about imported weapons? I mean, what exactly is the magic solution here that makes me look like a total asshole for not feeling 100% that Israel is the worst country in the history of the planet? What makes this black + white instead of shades of horrible grey?

man that mpac cartoon!

radio 4 just had SAS novelist andy mcnab on, criticising the idf's tactics: "see, what you want to do is swamp the ship, not drip-feed your soldiers in, get it over quicker, safer for everyone".

― naglpuss (c sharp major), Monday, May 31, 2010 10:42 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark

that sounds about right, but it depends on what you're trying to achieve! that isn't clear, but i think im right in saying that the IDF boarded a bunch of other ships without bloodshed(?) tbh it looks like fuckin' amateur hour, as if they didn't expect a hostile reception. also the whole "doing it in international waters" bit was never going to be a strong look. (obviously it wouldn't have gone down this way if the IDF had waited longer, right?)

Apparently Margaret Thatcher had a policy of 'acceptable violence' vis-a-vis the IRA, and that seems to have worked out.)

whatever abt anything else, that is so far off the mark

could you expand?

Off the mark that she had that policy? It's what I've read, is it wrong?

h8 thatcher and everything but n ireland was in less of a completely shitty situation in 1990 than in 1979

sidebar: the royal navy intercepted libyan shipments to the IRA

I'll admit, I'm not a scholar of British/NRA history at all. Here's Sullivan discussing it:

I'm more mindful of the British example, since I lived during it. For years, IRA terrorists bombed Britain's pubs and shops and eventually nearly killed the entire cabinet in the Brighton hotel bombing. Those terrorists lived among the population in both the republic and Ulster? Did Britain bomb Ireland in response? Were republican areas in the north sealed off and pulverized as happened in Gaza? Were British casualties one hundredth of Irish casualties in response?

None of this happened. Margaret Thatcher no less accepted what became known as an "acceptable level of violence" because the alternative would a) have caused domestic outrage and b) made the situation far, far worse and recruited a new army of terror. Again, one has to ask: why is Israel different?

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/05/noko-and-gaza.html

Did Britain bomb Ireland in response?

this is an insane nonsequitur

fuck israeli octopi

Again, one has to ask: why is Israel different?

its local enemies are backed by syria and iran, which pose an existential threat... there are similarities, of course, between the two situations. but there are simply no equivalents in modern british history to the all-out military offensives carried out by neighbour states against israel. the comparison is unreal on any number of levels.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hVL8zwFxlgQ/R7MODi_mvjI/AAAAAAAAAAg/SYXeiahDu_c/s400/octopus.jpg

Did Britain bomb Ireland in response?

i mean, just one example of why this is retarded: the republic of ireland also helped intercept libyan arms bound for the IRA!

Again, one has to ask: why is Israel different?

About a good as thread as any for Eric Hoffer's famous and challopy "Israel's Peculiar Position" article from 1968.

May 26, 1968

"The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab.

Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis.

Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious, it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.

Other nations — when they are defeated — survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June he would have wiped Israel off the map and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews. No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on.

There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him. The Swedes, who are ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we did in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.

The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to American and the West in general.

I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us."