Israel to World: "Suck It."

Another way of saying this is: who will Israel blame from now on? Are they essentially hoping that hardline groups like Hamas will fill the spotlight, lending more justification to their activities? Is cutting off Arafat maybe a way of racheting up the conflict, giving them license to do, well, whatever they want?

And note that I hold a federal government more responsible for those qualities than I do small groups or individuals. An "understandable" militaristic proclivity is one thing psychologically, but quite another politically.

Nitsuh - my assumption would be that Israel no longer cares whether or not it looks good. Sharon has realised he's in a position to call the international community's bluff.

Yeah, hence my thread title. I guess I'm just the slightest bit shocked by this, whereas you've been, if not expecting it, mentally prepared for the eventuality. Shame on you, pragmatist!

A head-on comparison is better, but this is all I could find. Have these two ever been in the same room together?

So Palestinian terrorist organazations are free to kill Israelis but Arafat isn't responsible?

Precisely! It's ludicrous to imagine that Arafat has the clout to control the actions of every Palestinian, considering that he's not even democratically elected as their representative. To hold Arafat responsible for the actions of, say, Hamas -- an organization with is completely at odds with Arafat -- is like trying to hold Bill Clinton responsible for Timothy McVeigh's actions: it is, quite simply, stupid. To assume Arafat has the capacity to reign in dozens upon dozens of groups and thousands upon thousands of individuals is to take a ridiculously reductive view of politics which assumes that Arafat is some sort of Queen Bee whose orders are specifically followed by all Palestinians (which is ludicrous), and pays no attention whatsoever to the pretty precarious position he was, up until recently, in: trying to speak for an inchoate populace, trying to make concessions on their behalf without offending them them enough to lose the very power to make those concessions.

And I don't think my distinction above is a very radical one. The Israeli military is by definition at the command of the Israeli government, thus the government is fairly directly responsible for its actions. The Palestinian populace is certainly not beholded to Arafat in nearly the same fashion.

If Arafat cannot stop these bombings and killings, what is the point of dealing with him?

See my comments above: even if he's not in a position to completely control the entirety of Palestine, he's as close as Israel is going to get to someone who can, and his presence and stature is in and of itself entirely remarkable. To not deal with him is to be content with devolving into outright war -- and if your main concern is "these bombings and killing," that's not the best route to take, is it?

Or greater importance, I think, is Who Comes Next -- a diplomat whom the Israelis don't mind, or a hardliner? Given this, I'm guessing the hardliner.

Sharon is a dangerous capitive of the religious right; one of the aspects of the conflict which especially mystifies me is the lack of empathy between the Likud Right in Israel (most of whom were members of Irgun Levi in the decade before independence, and carried out similar atrocities against the British, eg. the bombing of the King David Hotel in '47) and the Palestinians who have suceeded them as 'terrorists'. Incidently, Israel also funded Hamas as a religious rival to the secular PLO in the 1980s.

at some point over the next year Israel will shut down the Palestinian authority and permanently reoccupy all of the West Bank and Gaza, killing thousands of Palestinians in the process. Arafat will die during this process, as will Barghouti. This may happen before or after elections that put Netanyahu back in power. They will then invite the neighbouring Arab countries to come and have a go if they think they're hard enough. Which they don't, so they won't.

However, the West Bank and Gaza are so awash with arms that resistance will continue. Given the assymetric nature of the conflict - tanks, helicopter gunships, nuclear weapons on one side, machine guns and suicide bombers on the other - resistance will largely take the form of terrorist strikes against soft Israeli targets - civilians inside Israel, pieds noir settlers in the Occupied Territories.

Continuing violence will lead to voices in Israel demanding more and more violent responses. With no Palestinian Authority to kick around the Israelis will engage in ever more draconian acts towards their subject peoples - land confiscations, home demolitions, 24 hour curfews, eventually leading to concentration camps and mass expulsions.

Can't wait.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/189

While the Shoah does not justify more evil, I think it's incredibly short-sighted to dismiss the issue of anti-semitism as a "card" - as if it's some kind of underhanded trick even to mention it. And to acknowledge it as a defining feature of Israeli policy does not mean that one condones those policies - nor can it be used to somehow outweigh Arab suffering. But how can you even discuss the issue without addressing the religious conflict and history ?

How is it that the Hamas doesn't represent the Paelstinian people except when Israel threatens to "roll over" them?

I haven't said that Hamas ever represents the Palestinian people. I just thought you might have noticed that every Isreali action in Palestine -- assassinations, town occupations, etc. -- winds up killing almost as many civilians as the average suicide bomb. It's not as if they stride in, arrest these people, and leave: they bulldoze through entire towns or rocket out entire intersections. Last week's assassination took out a toddler.

What boggles my mind is not Palestinian discontent, but your acceptance of it at the level of consitently and intentionally killing innocent civilians.

And I've never said that I "accept" those actions -- only that I grasp the motivation behind them. And yes, I'm not going to be quite as morally upset at a people living under military occupation in an apartheid system as I am at a recognized nation with a powerful military. Would the Palestinians -- and everyone else on Earth -- have been better off if they'd framed their struggle peacefully, as black South Africans more or less did? Undoubtedly. But isn't that near-saintly behavior to expect?

As for being helpful and reasonable, where doessuck it fall into that?

Here is where you're quite obviously not paying attention, because you're agreeing with me! (And I'm not trying to be rude -- I just don't understand the statement at all.) My whole point in starting this thread is that Israel's big "suck it" to diplomacy is neither helpful or reasonable, so I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

Equating McVeigh with the Hamas is quite a stretch.

Again, I'm not "equating." Simply an example of how in no other situation do we hold a political figure responsible for the actions of every member of his constituency! (Doubly so with Arafat in that he's not a proper "leader" of the Palestinian populace, and triply so with Arafat in that most of the groups organizing such attacks are entirely opposed to Arafat and the PLO.) If the man had a state, and he were its leader, there'd be a little more grounds to criticize his police work.

Having the Hamas continue to kill people with no culpability was just unaceptable to the Israeli government.

I should think assassination without trial constitutes some culpability, doesn't it? And I feel like you're thinking Hamas is a tool of Arafat's, which simply isn't the case: the very reason Arafat can't reign in groups like Hamas is that they are his competitors!

I mean, Israel should talk about concessions while the Hamas is blowing up buses?

See, I think you have to stop viewing the situation by looking at terrorism first. Someone could just as easily say: Palestine should talk about concessions while Israel is blowing up buildings? Palestine should talk about concessions while Jewish-only settlements continue to exist? It's as if you're pretending that the sole problem to be solved is Palestinian terrorism, and everything Israel does is just a response to that -- but both history and the present are a lot trickier than that.

The thing is, I just can't morally justify the segregation and oppression of an entire populace simply because portions of it are violently hostile to you. It comes down one group depriving another of liberty simply to guarantee its own -- Israel segregating, restricting, and occupying the lands of Palestinians simply because they (legitimately) don't think they can feel safe if Palestinians have the rights of full citizens either in Israel or in a Palestinian state*. And I'm sorry -- this is untenable, and only feeds on itself, as the longer you deprive a group of liberty, the more hostile they'll grow toward you. I think that is my central problem here.

* And note that it was Israel who initially decided this with their mass expulsion of Palestinians who were, by and large, living peacefully within Israel proper -- and note that of all the attacks on Israel carried out during the past few years, only two, IIRC, have been conducted by Israeli Arabs. Both of these things hint that the liberty-for-safety trade was not only a bad one but an unnecessary, counter-productive one.

REMEMBER THE ALAMO!

I still think there's a difference between going after militants then going after people sitting in a cafe.

Sure, there's a difference. A huge one. But when "going after militants" repeatedly results in the death or dislocation of basically innocent bystanders -- as innocent as the folks in those cafes -- it becomes a little harder to justify, morally speaking. And I stick with my point, above, which is that it's really difficult to start applying general consequences to the actions of individual, non- representative groups, whereas it's a lot easier to do so for the regimented military of a sovereign nation. I.e., you can't say that one side attacks the other, or vice versa, because in the case of Palestine there is no "other" -- just a mass of individuals without a state, without a leader, etc.

My point about "suck it" was directed at your interpretation of what Israel cutting off Arafat means. I'm saying your choice of terminology reveals an obvious bias towards the situation.

In one sense yes, but in one sense, no: I was originally going to use "fuck it," but decided to try and keep the boards a little cleaner. Maybe I should have stuck with "fuck," because what's going through Sharon or his coalition's heads can't really be that far from throwing up their hands and saying, "Fuck it -- we give up on talking to you." That's quite clearly the message, and I think it can describes that way even if you believe Israel is entirely justified in doing this.

[W]hat Israel contends is that Arafat was never doing all he could.

Define "could." Seriously. Because this is what I'm getting at above. It's undeniable that Arafat physically and politically could have tried more. But my point is that he could have done so without gradually abandoning his own clout and losing support to groups like Hamas -- which would, in the long term, have been a lot worse of a situation if peace were the end goal. He essentially had to walk a very fine line between making progress with Israel and pissing off militants in Palestine -- and sure, it's open to debate whether he walked that line close enough, but I'm just saying we should keep in mind that he was never really in a position to utterly subdue the entire Palestinian populace.

I don't believe the South African analogy is particular fair because it fails to acknowledge how Israel has been forced to become a military state due to constant attacks on its existence by neighboring Arab states.

I can't claim to be an expert on this history, but I think you'll find that black Africans did their fair share of attacking in colonial South Africa. Apartheid didn't stem simply from racism, but partly from the same thinking that seems to be in operation in the mid-East -- that a particular group of people pose a danger of rebellion or violence and thus must be pre-emptively subdued. I mean, look at your statement above: Israel becomes militaristic because of attacks by neighboring Arab states. The only sense in which this justifies their attitude toward Palestine is that Palestinians are also Arabs, and are thus ideologically disposed to be hostile toward Israel. From there it just becomes a matter of "We will segregate and suppress Arabs as a whole," which, however logical it may be, doesn't strike me as morally tenable. It's not just "militants" who are having their lands seized or their roads blocked in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip -- it's the vast majority of Arabs within greater Israel, including many who were expelled from Israel proper and are not allowed to return, based not on their activities but on their potential activities. Would a better analogy be the US's internment of Japanese during WWII?

I think it is a large element in the Israeli mindset of trying to provide safety first. I think where we also disagree is in gauge of how much terrorism Israel is going to have to suck up, in order to get the peace process back on track.

"Safety first" may trump a lot of other concerns, but for me -- and this may be personal -- it doesn't trump basic human rights. The internment apparently struck people as a perfectly reasonable safety measure at the time, but I hope we'd all agree that even if some of those interned would have been more loyal to Japan than the US, the greater cost wasn't worth it. As far as sucking up, well, someone has to do some sucking up here, and thus far it's Palestinians who are sucking up being tenth-class citizens of the nation they ostensibly live in, plus progressive settlement. Put another way: given the choice to be an Israeli citizen or Palestinian, wouldn't you choose to be Israeli? And doesn't that hint that the threat of death by terrorism is significantly less onerous than the situation of the average Palestinian?

From the AP: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who negotiated interim peace deals with Arafat, said he told Sharon that the decision to shun the Palestinian Authority was short-sighted. "I asked him, 'Suppose Arafat disappears, what will happen then?'" Peres told the Yediot Ahronot daily in an interview published Friday. "If we chase Arafat out of here, we will get into problems with the Arab world, and Egypt and Jordan will sever ties with us."

The question, which is moral and not logistical: Israel undertakes massive sweep in the West Bank, arresting several, killing several Palestinian policemen in armed confrontation. What do we think, morally, about a sovereign nation arresting and imposing its own justice system on (leave alone assassinating) individuals who don't likewise enjoy the full rights of citizenry in that nation? I stress that this is not specific or logistical, but a general moral question.

If Arafat cannot offer any concessions, as in the Camp David talks, without pissing off the militants, then what does that say about the people of Palestine?

You're absolutely right -- it says a whole lot of them consider Israel's very presence to be an affront (and I think there's a reasonable case to be made in this regard), and it says that a whole lot of them are stuck enough on this point that they're not content to co-exist. Absolutely. The question is how this situation -- which isn't going to be changed simply by telling them they're wrong -- would best be handled. Having normalized relations with a figure like Arafat seems the best available way to steer things in a less oppositional direction; Arafat has as much clout in Palestine as any single figure could reasonably be expected to have, he's somewhat beholden to appease the requests of the West, and his line is soft enough that organizations like Hamas are outright opposed to him. I think what I'm saying is that if you're dealing with a populace that's largely hostile to you, the logical route to changing this is to deal with the least hostile figure that populace can deliver, right?

Also, I think Israel would contend that Arafat should be pissing off militants.

This is where I think you're ignoring the point I tried to make above. For Arafat to have pissed of militants would have meant weakening of his support, and quite possibly his assassination. This would leave us with practically nothing but the very militants you're talking about, not even a weak check on those militants -- plus they would be, as you say pissed off. Surely this was part of Arafat's thinking -- that he could do more good alive and in power than otherwise. You're saying that Arafat should have served as a tool to certain ends, but what if too strenuous use would only have broken the tool?

The quote you provide is yet another example of this: no Palestinian figure could accumulate any support or maintain any power without such posturing.

Pre-emptive? If I can't use the cause and effect argument then neither should you. I could just as easily state that Israel is there because of terrorism. There also seems to be an overlooking of the Six Day War.

Here's where I'm really bothered, because you're using a sort of Palestinian Queen Bee reasoning that's simply not applicable. A child born in Palestine today is born into a situation where his home is occupied and open to seizure, his movements are curtailed, etc. That child did not fight in the Six Day War. Thus any treatment of that child that is in any way different from that of an Israeli child is essentially pre-emptive suppression -- pre-emptive in that the suppression is contingent on the idea that this child may be hostile toward Israel. I'm not saying it's pre-emptive in the sense that "Israel started it" -- just that their military oversight of the Palestinian populace is not based on every single Palestinian having done something to warrant it. Hence the internment analogy: it's not that they've individually done something, just that the entire population is viewed as a threat and suppressed accordingly.

For what its worth, Arabs (or Muslims might be more fitting) are citizens in Israel. They receive the same rights, and can vote.

"They receive the same rights" is the most laughable thing I've ever heard in my life. To name one thing: Jewish-Only Settlements.

I think the first priority of a government is to protect its citizens.

C'mon -- certainly some moral boundary must be put on this. Citizens of the US would theoretically be much safer if we just killed everyone who was ever involved in a violent crime, but would you find this morally defensible? We'd theoretically be safer if we could just nuke the entire eastern hemisphere, but surely there's the quibbling little concern of destroying half of the world's population to think about.

Way, way one sided. Palestinians = victims. Israel = opressors. Come on, you know it isn't that simple.

I'm sorry, but at this point, it basically is. The only "oppression" Palestinians have been able to visit on Israel is the fear of possible terrorist attack, which is not so much "oppression" as just plain "threat." In turn, even the most peace-loving Palestinian lives under a similar threat of death-by-reprisal (see that toddler, above), plus a systematic removal of rights, which is precisely what "oppression" means.

Nah, more so because Israel has more of a Western lean i.e. its a capitalist Democracy.

I'm not sure how you reconcile this with your contention, above, that Palestinians are Israeli citizens who enjoy all the rights and privileges of any other Israeli citizens. "They vote," you say ... but here you say that Israelis enjoy democracy and Palestinians don't.

Still, you make it seem as if Israel does not want to recoginize Palestine as a state.

Well, define "want." They don't want to -- something like 56% of Israelis think it's either a good or a necessary or an unavoidable idea, but it still remains a concession that's being made. And, as I said above, I understand why. But it's the same as the suicide bombers -- I understand the motivation, I just don't think it's morally tenable.

Um.. correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this thread about the modern state of Israel? (kinda post 1945?)

Secondly, i never asked anyone to shut up about the holocaust. The link i posted above was for the discussion of a book called the Holocaust and Collective Memory by Peter Novick (published by Fourth Estate), in which he examines the history of the way the Holocaust has been cited by Israel and american Jewish organisations since 1945. it's interesting in the sense that it shows there's always been a contemporary political agenda to using the holocaust as a moral imperative - like you do - and that until the 1960s, the holocaust was played down, and manifestly NOT pushed as central to the "jewish character" / justification for Israeli military action.

I should have said all this when i originally posted, but I assumed people would follow the link I pasted in.

And also that questioning the logic of it as a moral imperative that justifies the military occupation of parts of the west bank is really just building a straw man and setting it alight, in a pointless and potentially offensive way.

What I'm saying applies more to the US industry of holocaust rememberance that -sadly- all seems ultimately to say "never again will we allow Jews to be massacred by Nazis in central europe in 1945" without looking at the mechanics of genocide elsewhere or the current problems of the middle east, but still generating tacit emotional support for Israel to act however it chooses. So sorry if what i said caused any offence.

The interesting thing about the Holocaust is that even if we do take it as central to the Jewish experience and character, and not just posturing or an attempt at justification, it's a rather unpretty argument, and a bit of another "suck it": the subtext is that Jews have historically been so threatened that they now have no qualms about steamrolling anyone who stands in their way. Certainly that's not an admirable thing?

Also -- and I tried to make this point when we did the "State of Israel: Classic or Dud" thread, I still don't understand how anyone justifies the necessity of a sovereign state of Israel. Without getting into the "what was worse than the Holocaust" argument, which is totally irrelevant, we can find countless other diasporas who have historically been massacred, enslaved, and scattered from their "homelands" in a similar fashion, but it tends to be agreed that we should strive to live pluralistically, not dislocate masses of people simple to return people to ethnically homogenous or ethnically restricted "homelands."

Out of curiousity, bnw, how do you feel about the violent seizure of white-owner farms in Zimbabwe?

Alex Fishman is the main commentator on security matters for Israel's largest mass circulation paper, Yediot Achronot, a publication with right-of-center politics. Fishman is known for his excellent contacts in the military. On Sunday, Nov. 25, Fishman issued a prediction based on the recent assassination on Nov. 23 by Israel's security services of the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud. It was featured in a box on the newspaper's front page.

It began, "We again find ourselves preparing with dread for a new mass terrorist attack within the Green Line (Israel's pre-'67 border)." Since Fishman was entirely accurate in this regard, we should mark closely what he wrote next. "Whoever gave a green light to this act of liquidation knew full well that he is thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman's agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line, of the kind perpetrated at the Dolphinarium (discotheque in Tel-Aviv)."

Fishman stated flatly that such an agreement did exist, even if neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas would admit it in public. "It is a fact," he continued, "that, while the security services did accumulate repeated warnings of planned Hamas terrorist attacks within the Green Line, these did not materialize. That cannot be attributed solely to the Shabak's impressive success in intercepting the suicide bombers and their controllers. Rather, the respective leaderships of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas came to the understanding that it would be better not to play into Israel's hands by mass attacks on its population centers."

In other words, Arafat had managed to convince Hamas to curb its suicide bombers. This understanding was shattered by the assassination of Abu Hunud. "Whoever decided upon the liquidation of Abu Hunud," Fishman continued, "knew in advance that that would be the price. The subject was extensively discussed both by Israel's military echelon and its political one, before it was decided to carry out the liquidation. Now, the security bodies assume that Hamas will embark on a concerted effort to carry out suicide bombings, and preparations are made accordingly."

HUGE difference: my complaint about Israel was that it was created specifically as a homeland for people of a certain ethnic heritage, as dictated by the completely deplorable, imperialist, anti-pluralistic line of thinking that various sorts of people should separate themselves into self-determining "homelands" (even if this means massive dislocation and reduction of self- determination for someone else). This is somewhat different from the people of an existing land adopting Islamic law, which is woefully theocratic but in the end not so different a concept from our own religiously-inflected laws in the US. In those cases Muslims already constitute the dominant portion of a region, whether we like it or not. But to create a nation specifically so that one group can be dominant within it? The subtext is that people have some sort of right to be able to go to a country in which they are a part of the ethnic majority (and that said country should be situated wherever they ethnically "come from," regardless of whether someone else has arrived there in the meantime). We have to reject that logic. To not reject that logic is to doom the very idea of pluralistic societies, and to call for exactly the sort of violence we see in the area right now.

You might recall, in that thread, that I ragged on Liberia for the same reason as Israel. I rejected the idea that Jews deserved as self- determining Israeli homeland for the same reasons I rejected the idea that Germans deserved a self-determining Aryan Fatherland, just like I'd have rejected any suggestion that all of the black people in the 1870's US should have been shipped over to Liberia or given Alabama and Mississippi as their own sovereign nation.

And I think I pointed out, in that thread, that some of this may have to do with personal experience. I do not understand nationalism, because I don't have any nation to be nationalistic about: I'm a "foreigner" no matter where I go. And yet I completely reject the idea that I "deserve" or have a right to anything else; we should all be foreigners.

And while I'm not going to claim that this is what was going through Arafat's head, all of this is why I understand rejecting Palestinian statehood if it's not accompanied by a "right of return" for all of those who were expelled from Israel.

"Out of curiousity, bnw, how do you feel about the violent seizure of white-owner farms in Zimbabwe?"

Honestly, I know next to nothing about it except that it sounded terrifying. A case of the "haves and the have-nots"? I can't even begin to get my head around the tribal violence in Africa.

Not tribal violence -- I asked because it bears on our discussion, insofar as you would sort of have to support land redistribution in Zimbabwe in order to support the existence of Israel. The rationale behind land redistribution is that, well, the land is African land and belongs to Africans, and white ownership of it is the result of violent colonial seizure; thus it's time to give it back. I am rather sympathetic to this logic. I am not as sympathetic to the rather less clear-cut logic of the creation of Israel, where the link goes back a long time, and the creation of a diaspora and the shifting population of the region were due to more natural historical processes, and not a recent, easy-to-identify colonization -- plus the very existence of a diaspora, of millions who had left the region, for centuries upon centuries, and then try to make claims upon it?

At root I am sympathetic to the idea that people need land to live on (see Zimbabwe), but hugely unsympathetic to the idea that people need a land. It's reductive, archaic, racist, stone-age thinking, and I simply can't support it.

The current situation is hardly cut and dried. My ambivalence is increased by the fact that impoverished black employees get detained, tortured and beaten senseless for working on these farms. Often they have no recourse but to work in such places in order to escape poverty.

The general populace are more concerned with survival than politics. In my experience, the overriding concern is with the increasingly totalitarian regime under President Mugabe.

Inspired somewhat by President Bush, his most recent tactic is to label any opposition party member a "terrorist" and have them dealt with accordingly.

The situation in Zimbabwe is spiralling rapidly out of control, and the forcible repatriation of white-owned farms is only one such example.

Afghanistan News Sunnah Sunni Deobandi Islam Islaam Kashmir Afghanistan Jihad Jihaad Chechnya Kosovo Awliya Sufiyah Sufi Soofi Sibghatullah Shah Pir Pagaro Sindh Punjab Balauchistan Balochistan Afghanistan Terror Terrorism War Militant Radical Extremist fanatic fundamentalist Sunni movement Special forces soldiers wahabi wahhaabi wahhabi Syedayn Shaheedayn Ambala Deoband Saharanpur Kandhla Thana bhawan Akora Khattak Balakot Hyderabad Karachi lyari MQM Hikayat Hikayaat peace spirit spiritual Waliullah wali saint worship veneration Sajda Ghairullah Ghayr Ghair Kufr Ilhaad Zanadaqah Wahdat ul Wajood Shahood Tassawuf Islaah Tazkiyah Nafs Shaytaan Satan Shaitan Zikr Dhikr Zakir Zaakir Dhaakir Abid Zahid Zuhd Istaghna Sabr "Safhaat min Sabr ul Ulama" ar-Rasheed trust

Sunnah Deobandi Sunni Islam Islaam Kashmir Afghanistan Jihad Jihaad Chechnya Kosovo Awliya Sufiyah Sufi Soofi Sibghatullah Shah Pir Pagaro Sindh Punjab Balauchistan Balochistan Afghanistan Terror Terrorism War Militant Radical Extremist fanatic fundamentalist Sunni movement Special forces soldiers wahabi wahhaabi wahhabi Syedayn Shaheedayn Ambala Deoband Saharanpur Kandhla Thana bhawan Akora Khattak Balakot Hyderabad Karachi lyari MQM Hikayat Hikayaat peace spirit spiritual Waliullah wali saint worship veneration Sajda Ghairullah Ghayr Ghair Kufr Ilhaad Zanadaqah Wahdat ul Wajood Shahood Tassawuf Islaah Tazkiyah Nafs Shaytaan Satan Shaitan Zikr Dhikr Zakir Zaakir Dhaakir Abid Zahid Zuhd Istaghna Sabr "Safhaat min Sabr ul Ulama"

Up to 16 killed as Israeli forces storm aid convoy

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/31/2914131.htm?section=world

Stay classy Israel.

Ask Imaam Imam Sunnah Sunni Deobandi Islaam Islam Kashmir Afghanistan Jihad Jihaad Chechnya Kosovo Awliya Sufiyah Sufi Soofi Sibghatullah Shah Pir Pagaro Sindh Punjab Balauchistan Balochistan Afghanistan Terror Terrorism War Militant Radical Extremist fanatic fundamentalist Sunni movement Special forces soldiers wahabi wahhaabi wahhabi Syedayn Shaheedayn Ambala Deoband Saharanpur Kandhla Thana bhawan Akora Khattak Balakot Hyderabad Karachi lyari MQM Hikayat Hikayaat peace spirit spiritual Waliullah wali saint worship veneration Sajda Ghairullah Ghayr Ghair Kufr Ilhaad Zanadaqah Wahdat ul Wajood Shahood Tassawuf Islaah Tazkiyah Nafs Shaytaan Satan Shaitan Zikr Dhikr Zakir Zaakir Dhaakir Abid Zahid Zuhd Istaghna Sabr "Safhaat min Sabr ul Ulama" Abdul Fattah Abu Ghuda

Afghanistan News Sunnah Sunni Deobandi Islam Islaam Kashmir Afghanistan Jihad Jihaad Chechnya Kosovo Awliya Sufiyah Sufi Soofi Sibghatullah Shah Pir Pagaro Sindh Punjab Balauchistan Balochistan Afghanistan Terror Terrorism War Militant Radical Extremist fanatic fundamentalist Sunni movement Special forces soldiers wahabi wahhaabi wahhabi Syedayn Shaheedayn Ambala Deoband Saharanpur Kandhla Thana bhawan Akora Khattak Balakot Hyderabad Karachi lyari MQM Hikayat Hikayaat peace spirit spiritual Waliullah wali saint worship veneration Sajda Ghairullah Ghayr Ghair Kufr Ilhaad Zanadaqah Wahdat ul Wajood Shahood Tassawuf Islaah Tazkiyah Nafs Shaytaan Satan Shaitan Zikr Dhikr Zakir Zaakir Dhaakir Abid Zahid Zuhd Istaghna Sabr "Safhaat min Sabr ul Ulama" ar-Rasheed trust

Sunnah Deobandi Sunni Islam Islaam Kashmir Afghanistan Jihad Jihaad Chechnya Kosovo Awliya Sufiyah Sufi Soofi Sibghatullah Shah Pir Pagaro Sindh Punjab Balauchistan Balochistan Afghanistan Terror Terrorism War Militant Radical Extremist fanatic fundamentalist Sunni movement Special forces soldiers wahabi wahhaabi wahhabi Syedayn Shaheedayn Ambala Deoband Saharanpur Kandhla Thana bhawan Akora Khattak Balakot Hyderabad Karachi lyari MQM Hikayat Hikayaat peace spirit spiritual Waliullah wali saint worship veneration Sajda Ghairullah Ghayr Ghair Kufr Ilhaad Zanadaqah Wahdat ul Wajood Shahood Tassawuf Islaah Tazkiyah Nafs Shaytaan Satan Shaitan Zikr Dhikr Zakir Zaakir Dhaakir Abid Zahid Zuhd Istaghna Sabr "Safhaat min Sabr ul Ulama"

great point

Not to play Captain Defend an Israel, but acc. to the very sparse on details article, the people were killed when they resisted the commandos. If supposedly there were no weapons on board, what exactly were they resisting with? (For all I know, they just resisted by punching the commandos, or sitting peacefully, but that seems kinda unlikely.)

Larger story from Haaretz, including:

"The boats are carrying items that Israel bars from reaching Gaza, like cement and other building materials." -- which is really fucked up that they aren't allowed in Gaza.

but also:

The military said in a statement: "Navy fighters took control of six ships that tried to violate the naval blockade (of the Gaza Strip) ... During the takeover, the soldiers encountered serious physical violence by the protesters, who attacked them with live fire."

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/at-least-10-activists-killed-in-israel-navy-clashes-onboard-gaza-aid-flotilla-1.293089

IDF claims they used tools and knives and someone went for a soldier's gun. Protesters claim that they only passively resisted. In any case, 14 protesters were killed in international by the IDF after commandos stormed their flotilla carrying aid to Gaza. Draw your own conclusions.

Just to preempt, I think the whole Gaza situation is totally fucked up, and that there is a lot more Israel + Egypt could and should be doing for the people living there. Either/both governments should stepped forward to work with any humanitarian mission if they are that concerned about weapon/rocket smuggling. That neither did, and just told the mission that they can't deliver the aid, is super cold hearted and basically evil by way of Hannah Arendt thoughtlessness. That said, if you want to deliver aid to Gaza, and you already know it's likely that Israel will step in and stop you (at least an even shot, some shipments are allowed through, some are halted), don't carry weapons. That a) sets you up for a violent conflict and b) justifies what Israel was complaining about in the first place -- that you're bringing weapons into Gaza -- and totally undermines any humanitarian mission you might have. And if you're going to carry weapons (maybe you need them in case of pirates? idk), don't open fire on the freaking army. How could that possibly end well?

The statement quoted in Haaretz says they were attacked with live fire.

and protestors say they only passively resisted

NYT:

Channel 10, a private station in Israel, quoted the Israeli Trade Minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, as saying between 14 and 16 people had been killed on one of the flotilla ships. He said on Israeli Army Radio that commandos boarded the ship by sliding down on ropes from a hovering helicopter, and were then struck by passengers with “batons and tools.”

I think you are missing the point of the flotilla. It's not simply a matter of delivering much-needed supplies to Gaza. The point is to violate the Israeli blockade. The point is to draw attention to Israel's policies.

I guess it's possible commandos killed innocents only passively resisting, and then the army covered up for a bunch of psychos in their army, but sounds very unlikely to me. Israel has a functioning press. I don't think that's the kind of thing the government could get away with. (But I could be wrong!)

Considering it's just "he said she said" at this point and will probably stay that way, history is written by the victors, etc.

I guess it's possible commandos killed innocents only passively resisting, and then the army covered up for a bunch of psychos in their army, but sounds very unlikely to me.

Have you no knowledge of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict?

xpost

If the purpose was to provoke Israel into murdering civilians, then mission accomplished, I guess. It seems like a lot of strategy is provoking Israel to do something horrific and then hoping something changes because of it. Maybe this'll be the catalyst for complete change in the relationship between Israel and Gaza -- or maybe it'll just be another really tragic, morally repulsive moment in the Middle East that does nothing to change the status quo or make life better for the people living in Gaza.

Super Cub, I know plenty about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Do you know how Israeli Press works? Most press in Israeli is very cynical and holds the government to account often. It seems unlikely to me that you could get away with lying about something like this.

Well, Ha'aretz is basically Israel's answer to The Guardian and is normally the go-to paper for a liberal viewpoint. But what they've done is to Xerox a government press release/statement without digging further, which may in itself be a comment on the behaviour of the military.

Yeah, I don't think the immediate report tonight will be the final story. But if soldiers opened fire on passive resisters, I imagine that'll be in Ha'aretz this week.

Well it only happened a few hours ago, miles out at see - not sure what kind of coverage you're expecting yet

um, sea

If you know a lot about Israel and this conflict, how is it inconceivable to you that the IDF could be covering up a botched operation that resulted in civilian deaths? The last 20 years are riddled with instances of alleged IDF abuses and accusations of cover-ups. It's a mainstay of this conflict.

http://www.shovrimshtika.org/index_e.asp

xpost

And yeah, this happened like 5 hours ago.

idk Super Cub. Like I said, I guess it's possible they are lying about there being live fire resistance. Just super short-sighted to lie about something like that imo. There were a lot of people on the flotilla. It's not the kind of thing you can conspire about one way or another. I don't see all of the activists making up a story and sticking to it, and, as that website you just linked points out, it's hard to get soldiers to lie about their roles in a conflict.

tbh, I really hope there was live fire. If Israel killed those people, even if they were wielding batons or whatever, it's going to end up really fucked up. Especially if Raed Salah was a casualty. There could be another Intifada, and if you can't trust the Israeli army to handle the flotilla situation, you definitely don't want them trying to handle rioters and protesters all over the place. Things could get massively screwed up really quickly.

I don't want to debate you on this, so this is the last post I'll make on the subject.

I think you are woefully ignorant of the dynamics of this conflict. It's entirely possible that the IDF was fired upon, but it's ridiculous to say that the IDF wouldn't use grossly disproportionate force and then try to cover it up (or at least try and justify it). That is pretty much the IDF's standard operating procedure when it come to Gaza. That was the basic strategy in the Gaza War.

xpost

suzy, one of several pieces in today's Haaretz bitterly criticising the Israeli military: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/gaza-flotilla-drives-israel-into-a-sea-of-stupidity-1.292959

"(or at least try and justify it)"

I don't disagree with this. But there's obv a huge gap between justifying something and covering it up.

Anyway, you're right. It's not worth debating over. The whole thing just has me sick to my stomach and it's 4:20 here when I should be sleeping instead of reading about this.

Oh, woah. It's 4:20.

this is obviously completely fucked up

mordy otm itt

I think you are missing the point of the flotilla. It's not simply a matter of delivering much-needed supplies to Gaza. The point is to violate the Israeli blockade.

indeed: both israel and egypt said they would be fine with the supplies being landed and conveyed into gaza by truck

I try to stay off these threads because Mordy is constantly defending all manner of inexcusable Israeli atrocities, but I strongly disagree with your defense of his blatant idiocy, and Super Cub is the one who's otm here.

i think it's too early in the day to call this an 'inexcusable atrocity' but perhaps you have fresh information

up his sleeve

where the fuck do you see mordy's 'blatant idiocy' n e way? think you're just throwing down tough words

Sleeve, Mordy brings a worthwhile perspective to these threads! Starting with a refusal to call others idiots for arguing for a different picture of the region.

Guardian's Jerusalem correspondent: http://twitter.com/harrietsherwood

Yeah, Mordy's a lot of things, but captain save-an-Israel he's not. He might have more invested in it as a state than some of us, but the investment seems mainly of the "i hope one day they'll stop being assholes" variety, and in this case it's "I hope they're not killing unarmed people because that will lead to even more tragedy". A pretty reasonable position, imo.

One of my very brightest Jewish friends from school is Israeli-born and heavily invested in Zionism (let's just say a cousin of hers has been in a coma for four years). I am reluctant to discuss it with her because her emotionalism around I/P is completely at variance to how coolly and logically she looks at any other issue.

I basically feel the same about those heavily invested in anti-Zionisim

so this isn't very good. also feeling more like IDF overkill.

hate to say it but we pretty much saw this coming, can't even for a minute begin to think of rationalizing or defending this massacre though

again, i'd wait till we had a clearer picture of what happened before trying to 'rationalize' it

if it's true that the israeli commandos landed on the ship and just began unloading into the sleeping civilians (as claimed), then indeed that would be indefensible

it'd be indefensible imo even if the civilians weren't 'sleeping' - and it seems there have been a handful of posts itt that have already tried to justify and rationalize it

idk though like - up to 19 people on the boat killed w/ many more wounded compared to 2 attackers wounded - what did they have, slingshots?

pretty standard IDF casualty numbers imo

http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.293313.1275312330!/image/577873088.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_295/577873088.jpg

So it's not short for InDeFensible?

it'd be indefensible imo even if the civilians weren't 'sleeping' - and it seems there have been a handful of posts itt that have already tried to justify and rationalize it

― k3vin k., Monday, May 31, 2010 3:25 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

again, we really don't know what happened. according to the convoy's spokespeople, the civilians were asleep though.

dude - by all accounts the IDF stormed a humanitarian aid boat, slaughtered 10-19 people and barely escaped with a scratch. i think it's pretty clear they fucked up somehow

oh well if they fucked up then clearly it's beyond rationalization

we must use the most emotive language possible in not defending it

sounds like a pretty clean operation, actually.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev accused the leaders of the flotilla of looking for a fight.

"They wanted to make a political statement. They wanted violence," according to Regev, who said Israel wanted a peaceful interception of the ships trying to break Israel's blockade of Gaza. "They are directly responsible for the violence and the deaths that occurred."

so if they knew they are there to provoke, why attack them? Israel should know by now this kind of stuff plays straight in Gazan hands.

We don't know that they "attacked". They were enforcing an existing (admittedly bullshit) law. Do you seriously expect Israel to cave on it just because someone tested them? For every IDF disgusting abuse of power there's some really callous guerrilla strike by Palestinians or their sympathizers. We can get self-righteous when we know what actually happened, but being so ready to point fingers in such a historically-complex situation is rash. We can get self-righteous when we know what actually happened.

think its probably more important at this point to take the helpful step of making heady accusations and questioning other peoples motivations

honestly, think the only way israel comes out of this not looking like psychos is if there was live fire or some other kind of legitimate threat posed by the activists. honestly wouldn't doubt there was non-passive struggling between some activists and the troops (ppl get hysterical, shit happens, not all activists are actually pacifists), but i find it deeply, deeply unlikely that what happened could justify the IDF acing 10-19 civilians

anyway RIP flotilla ppl, it's pretty horrible regardless who shot first

LOL @ drunken copy n paste double.

um is there any book thats a pretty good non partisan (well...) overview of israeli/palestinian conflict for ppl who are sick of "not understanding the context" of shit that goes down there

i mean zionism and the connection b/w jewishness is something that i only get on a very basic level that doesn't really resolve much between what happens in the old testament and what's on the news now also

honestly, think the only way israel comes out of this not looking like psychos is if there was live fire or some other kind of legitimate threat posed by the activists. honestly wouldn't doubt there was non-passive struggling between some activists and the troops (ppl get hysterical, shit happens, not all activists are actually pacifists), but i find it deeply, deeply unlikely that what happened could justify the IDF acing 10-19 civilians

anyway RIP flotilla ppl, it's pretty horrible regardless who shot first

― gbx, Monday, May 31, 2010 6:04 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark

having looked at a number of vids, it does seem basically that the israeli soldiers were attacked immediately on landing on the boat. now, landing on the boat unprotected was probably not a good idea, but then hitting soldiers with metal poles is also p stoopid. so i think there was a legitimate threat to the soldiers, but it's still a complete clusterfuck.

There's talk that Turkey will send navy boats with the next convoy, but the only sources are Indian TV, so I don't know how likely it is. Be a hell of an escalation if they did.

the rich-historical-irony-o-meter wd p much go through the roof

turkey goin ham

o shi

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/books/review/Rodenbeck.t.html here's the nytimes review of the book.

Geez, if I made a list of things I wish I could delete from this board, idealistic talk about Israel/Palestine from when I was just getting out of college would be #1.

This, though, I think we talked about this kind of thing somewhere else:

"They wanted violence. ... They are directly responsible for the violence and the deaths that occurred."

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.

yeah that's certainly the most infuriating part -- "we had no choice!!"

I never really know what press to turn to when these I/P conflicts arise--everything is just so deeply partisan and emotive either way unlike few other topics. It's hard to know precisely what to believe.

Like in Europe, so many people are flooding to the streets protesting, which just doesn't happen when other countries commit war crimes (e.g. North Korea sinking that ship last week). Does it touch such a nerve with people because of the whole bitter religious backdrop, or just because people know the U.S. (and therefore the UN) will do fuck all about it, so they feel that have to make a huge noise?

Sometimes they even manage to sound aggrieved and annoyed about it, like it's so burdensome how people keep making them kill them. "Can't a guy get through a single day of stopping basic resources from reaching people without someone coming along and forcing us to kill them? It's just so rude."

I call it Look What You Made Me Do syndrome - total abuser MO.

why can't we have both

Sometimes they even manage to sound aggrieved and annoyed about it, like it's /so burdensome/ how people keep making them kill them. "Can't a guy get through a single day of stopping basic resources from reaching people without someone coming along and /forcing/ us to kill them? It's just so rude."

nabisco is otm

It's the Bull Connor school of law enforcement

Like in Europe, so many people are flooding to the streets protesting, which just doesn't happen when other countries commit war crimes (e.g. North Korea sinking that ship last week). Does it touch such a nerve with people because of the whole bitter religious backdrop, or just because people know the U.S. (and therefore the UN) will do fuck all about it, so they feel that have to make a huge noise?

anyone i've ever met who has a real bee in their bonnet about palestine has been anti-american, far-left, and/or muslim; europe has a lot of people like that.

Does it touch such a nerve with people because of the whole bitter religious backdrop, or just because people know the U.S. (and therefore the UN) will do fuck all about it, so they feel that have to make a huge noise?

not really: the UN is doing fuck-all about north korea torpedoing a warship/90 people being blown up in pakistan on friday/____________ but for some reason I/P engages people in a special way

on the matter of press releases, neither side really covers themselves in glory, but this is kind of a side issue

There are a number of obvious reasons why Israel is held to a higher standard than say North Korea.

1. The USA supplies large amounts of arms and aid to Israel

2. Israel proports to be a democracy that respects human rights

3. Israel was founded on principles of human rights and a need to give an oppressed people a safe haven

And more beyond that, I'm sure.

4. china is on the security council

Israel was founded on principles of human rights

:/

Israel does seem to be heading toward greater isolation and rogue status, a la North Korea.

Israel was founded on principles of human rights

:/

― ᵒ always toasted, never fried (crüt), Monday, May 31, 2010 7:38 PM (31 seconds ago)

Maybe I should say, Isreal's inception coincided with a desire to increase human rights.

i hope the UN security council, comprising moral giants like um the UK(!), US(!!), russia(!!!), and china(!!!!), condemns israel pdq

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.

tbf, Israel's has a good human rights record for its own citizens--it's very much a liberal democracy (gay rights, free speech/press, fair judiciary etc.). It's just how it treats Gaza...

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."

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?

― Mordy, Monday, May 31, 2010 6:25 PM (49 minutes ago)

i haven't read anything that says weapons were being smuggled on the boat. israel is at fault because they stormed a boat full of civilians in order to enforce their blockade (which we all find repugnant) and, inarguably, used wildly disproportionate force after they attacked the boat. i'm not eager to wait for 'all the facts' because i literally cannot conceive of a situation in which killing a dozen or so people was necessary, whether they had big metal poles or were throwing soldiers overboard. (if there was live fire from the activists, they must have had really bad aim.)

i'm not really willing to speculate on what they should have done 'given the circumstances', because that would just legitimize the situation they were in in the first place. thankfully, i'm not running for public office in israel, because i don't have the answers either - all i care is that not enough is being done, and national security isn't a legitimate excuse for denying food, medicine, and building supplies to the innocent men, women, and children who didn't choose to be born and live there. it's hardly a balance, either - it's national security and the rights of israeli jews first, rights of israeli arabs and palestinians second

The problem, as it appears to me, is that you don't know which boats are smuggling what. So you're not really contending with how Israel should secure themselves vis-a-vis smuggling. 'legitimize the situation they were in in the first place,' I assume you mean the situation of having a blockade to enforce. Btw, I agree with you -- I think the Israeli government hasn't done nearly enough for the people in Gaza. But I think national security is definitely a legitimate consideration, and I don't know what kinds of metric you can use to measure food/medicine versus national security. If you let all imports through, standards of living will improve, but history also tells us that people will die from rocket fire. I can't imagine being the person deciding to make the decision of what to do (actually, it kinda reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem), and it sounds like you don't have a perfect answer either. Anyway, that's why I'm often "defending" Israel on these threads. I don't know what the better solution is.

also I totally don't condone any kind of violence by the people on the boat, if indeed they attacked first (if you can even call it that, given people with guns were dropping out of the sky). But I especially loathe killing a dozenish of them in response, which was highly likely disproportionate to the threat they posed (ha kind of a microcosm of my reaction to most of the violence in the area). Anyway i hold the soldiers to a higher standard, because they should at least have some semblance of organization and restraint - again i am not their commanding officer so i have little interest in how i would have handled it better - my conclusion is just that their handling was not good enough

I don't blame the soldiers. If you rappel down onto a boat where you're being shot at (we'll see if there was live fire, but there was certainly slingshots, etc) and attacked, I can't imagine how hard it is to keep perspective. There are apparently seriously injured soldiers, so clearly there was danger to them. They very likely acted disproportionately, but I don't blame that decision in the moment. I think the bigger issue was the decision to send such a small group of soldiers to the ship. At best, they totally miscalculated the response they'd get (which seems really silly, if you're going to repel down with weapons drawn, expect to need to use those weapons), at worst they just didn't consider the possibilities of escalated violence because they didn't really care if it came to that. Either way, it's definitely leadership on the mission's fault.

the video definitely changed my opinion on the 'threat they posed' - that's a pretty blood-thirsty mob

I spelled rappel correctly the first time and incorrectly the second time. Weird.

xp haha sorry i'm going on a tangent here

mordy our duty isn't to just throw up our hands and say "what else can be done?" - it's to demand that those in power figure out new ways to solve problems like these without taking away basic rights and necessities of unpopular people. Maybe we're different but my first concern is the living conditions of the people being oppressed (and not much research has to be done to know exact metrics reflecting the horrible conditions and laws they're subject to, something like 2/3 of children in gaza are born with anemia), it's not a secondary concern. but i'm a touchy feely type like that

not to suggest that you're not - i'm just saying i can't for a second rationalize a lot of policies of a lot of countries!

Yeah, I hear you. Generally I feel totally alienated from locations of power + politics. I don't even vote in Israeli elections, and in the elections I do vote, I feel powerless. So how am I going to hold Israel accountable for finding better solutions? I'm much more interested in what I can do on a ground level, which requires that I take contradictory positions into account and try to think through ways of mediating them. If you ignore Israel's concern with security you're basically going to have as little intelligible input into the process as if you ignore Palestinian concern with health/education (also with security!). There are two parties involved. I just don't see the value of picking a side. I'd rather try and figure out what might work. But I get that you have a different agenda here. (Btw, if I'm misrepresenting you, I'm totally sorry. This is how I understand what you're saying, but I admit, I could be wrong.)

yeah i think that as a good bleeding librul, i'm always gonna instinctively side with the weak or oppressed against the strong - not that I condone any of the politics or actions of theirs, i of course despise and condemn violence from either side. i just feel it's especially important to call out israel when it does things i don't agree with, not because i'm "against" them, but because as the ones with actual power and leverage, change has to come from them. so i want them to figure out ways to reslove the conflict without killing innocent people, without denying food and medicine, and without blocking access to important roads. i wish i knew what the answer was, but i can't support a solution it if it involves any of the above

and sorry if i came off a little curt - i appreciate that we're coming at this with different perspectives and investments

It seems to me that Israel has this myopic view of all conflict: them or us. I can understand that to an extent, but every decision seems completely dominated by that dichotomy.

Israel's view on flotilla issue:
1. do nothing, let arms into Gaza, Jews get killed
2. take out flotilla, no Jews get killed

That's it.

There must be a third way. Negotiations? Including a basically neutral third party in the resolution? Inspectors?

Clearly the flotilla organizers wanted confrontation, but it's just remarkable how Israel plays right into that design. Israel seems to consider any kind of strategic thinking or maneuvering as a sign of mortal weakness. It's only kill or be killed.

Can someone be an adult here???

so were they smuggling weapons or did mordy just pull that out of his ass

^I realize numerous wars aimed to destroy you will create this mentality, but with Israel in a dominate position in the region, it seems like a chance for Israel to rethink its basic approach to security.

xpost to myself

so were they smuggling weapons or did mordy just pull that out of his ass

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, June 1, 2010 12:58 AM (47 seconds ago

I think weapon smuggling into Gaza is a reality, but most of it is through tunnels from Egypt. There are a HUGE smuggling operations along that border.

J0rdan, the question isn't whether they were in this particular vessel (tho they had at least knives + molotov cocktails) but that weapons are constantly being smuggled into Gaza. Where do you think the rockets come from? (You are aware that they fire rockets into Israel consistently, correct?)

Super Cub: Israel + Egypt both agreed to let the flotilla dock in their countries, be searched, and then allowed to continue into Gaza. That seems like an attempt at compromise + negotiation. They probably should've pursued that more, I agree, but it's not like they're 100% myopic.

I don't think this is posted yet. No idea whether it's propaganda or true, but if true, they were definitely bringing shit into Gaza.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvS9PXZ3RWM

personally i think that video puts the situation into a bit of a grayer area -- still by watching that video (as grainy as it is) i can't imagine why 12 of these people needed to be killed, that's a really excessive number compared to the amount of israeli soldiers that were injured -- that said, i would sympathize on a soldier-by-soldier basis with the specific soldiers who were being beaten with metal poles (or w/e) and being thrown overboard, in the dark no less, which i'm sure really complicated matters -- it's a pretty fucked up situation in general, in which both the people on the floatilla & the specific soldiers are at fault -- who was more at fault is a bit up in the air to me, but like i said, i can't see how the force didn't quickly move from "self-defense" to "extremely excessive"

i have a more of a problem with israel's post-attack response as outlined by nabisco, as well as the whole notion of a blockade & on top of that the whole notion of defending the blockade by storming civilian aid boats.

maybe a bit late here but

but n ireland was in less of a completely shitty situation in 1990 than in 1979

Wasn't the Provisional Wing of the IRA actually supposedly fairly limited memberwise until the hunger strikes where Thatcher let them starve to death, which lead to anger in nationalist communities and a huge propaganda boost to the Provisional IRA and membership increased in great numbers. The Brighton bombing was a response to the hunger strike deaths.

At least that's how it was always as perceived as being. maybe someone more in the know can correct this if it's wrong.

Was the ceasefire in effect by 1990?

xp ^^yes

to the point - no guns in that confiscation video

like i think we can argue to the death about what happened on this specific flotilla without really getting very far because it has, in my mind, clearly emerged as a pretty complicated situation where this very regrettable outcome for both sides was exacerbated greatly by each side

i think the underlying issues regrading israel's strategies & feelings towards gaza and the public statements made by their officials are much more interesting & worrisome

btw the video i'm referring to in my post is not that one that mordy posted, but the night vision one that amon posted, haven't watched mordy's yet tho

My first post here after reading reaction all day, so tell me if this is out of line: the Israeli military, often considered the best in the world, surely had more...reasonable ways of dealing with belligerents than shooting them. Couldn't they have restrained the attackers?

or "immobilized" them or whatever

mordy's video hasn't really convinced me of anything besides the fact that maybe the people on the flotilla were too overly ready & eager for a confrontation -- if that video's trying to convince me that these people were smuggling molotov cocktails, wooden poles and power strips into gaza with which to "attack" israel, i wouldn't really have much sympathy for the country with the capabilities to rappel its soldiers onto boats via helicopter

they were definitely bringing shit into Gaza.

You mean knives and bats? I have that shit lying around my house. I thought we were talking about real arms, like explosives and rockets. I don't think that collection of household items will do much against M1A1 tanks, F-16s, and Apache gunships.

xpost

My point way above is that if you're bringing supplies into Gaza, and Israel has already accused you of smuggling weapons, why make it easy for them by actually having frightening fucking knives and molotov cocktails? And if you need them for whatever reason, why would you use them on the army? Anyway, the real point about smuggling isn't about whether this ship had it or not. Smuggling weapons into Gaza is a legit problem. I don't know the percentages of smuggled stuff through tunnels v. through ships, though most ships don't get through. (I do remember a huge weapon cache was recovered being smuggled on a ship to Gaza a few years ago.) That's why the blockade is up. Not because Israel hates Palestinians and wants to torture them for their own sadistic pleasure. Any answer to the matzif is going to involve figuring out a way to keep weapons from being smuggled in while still allowing aid and stuff to come in. I think k3v is right that inspections through a third party neutral might be the way to go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karine_A_Affair

I think Israel has legitimate concerns about weapons being brought it on boats.

it is about whether this ship had them or not, because clearly israel needs a better way of determining such things then to just assume that every single humanitarian aid ship is smuggling weapons in & with according force

& ACT with according force

They asked the boat to dock at Ashkelon so that they could inspect the stuff. The flotilla refused. I guess they could've gotten a third neutral party to inspect it, maybe the flotilla would've agreed to that (they might have done that, I know Egypt invited them to dock, so that was sorta a third party). Or brought a bigger force when they decided to inspect it themselves, that might've resulted in a more successful mission without unnecessary deaths.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/idf-vows-to-block-freedom-flotilla-aid-convoy-to-gaza-1.292424

This was published on the 27th. It basically predicts everything that was about to happen.

I imagine more than just predicting it, the information being out there helped create the situation (a boat filled w/ people who were expecting that israelis were going to board?)

I don't understand why, upon hearing that the IDF are going to board their humanitarian aid ship to inspect for weapons, the people on the flotilla would decide to get weapons and attack the soldiers.

that is certainly a question that needs to be answered

Sort of a side-note, but to be honest, the types of weapons mentioned here sound more likely to be used on Palestinians than Israelis.

Mordy, I understand a lot of what you're saying here, but ... you mention that Trolley Problem. But the whole basis of the Trolley Problem is that the person it's being posed to has control of a switch. And it's not like I'm so positive I'm right about anything, but can I suggest that a lot of your thinking here starts from the position I was talking about earlier -- this position where maybe the Israeli government feels like it has a complete moral right to the switch? And I know we want to be pragmatic and all, but don't you think that might be a fundamental problem? A lot of statements you're making seem to proceed via this logic that Israeli lives and safety are important, therefore Israel has the moral authority to make trade-offs with other people's lives and safety to protect it. But I'm guessing this is not a moral authority you would remotely cede to someone who was mostly concerned with, say, Palestinian lives and safety.

In other words, we could talk a lot (and probably agree a lot!) about what are defensible or productive ways for Israel to operate the switch, but there's this bigger question of claiming the switch in the first place. Maybe it's necessary and, for the time being, unchangeable, but I feel like if you work from the logic that Israel just naturally OWNS that claim from the get-go, there are going to places where you're reasoning from a flawed start. For instance, it's how we get a lot of this "stop hitting yourself" defense mentality -- it's only by assuming ownership of fate, ownership of the switch, that you start saying "you did this to yourself! you knew what the rules were! the rules we made!"

(Does that make sense, or is it too abstract?)

(Sorry, I should be clearer about that first part -- what I mean is I'd guess that blunt/crude weapons that make it into Gaza are probably more likely to be used for internal violence or intimidation than things affecting Israeli security, wouldn't they? I'm NOT saying this is relevant, just noticing it.)

Greenwald:

UPDATE VI: Among the countries condemning Israel for its attack are Russia, Turkey, India, China, Brazil, France, Spain and many more. By stark contrast, the White House issued a statement which conspicuously refused to condemn the Israelis (Obama "expressed deep regret at the loss of life in today’s incident, and concern for the wounded"), while the U.S. State Department actually hinted at condemning the civilians delivering the aid ("we support expanding the flow of goods to the people of Gaza. But this must be done in a spirit of cooperation, not confrontation").

Obama's call for "learning all the facts and circumstances" is reasonable enough, but all these other countries made clear that this attack could never be justified based on what is already indisputably known: namely, that the ship attacked by Israel was in international waters and it resulted in the deaths and injuries to dozens of civilians, but no Israeli soldiers were killed and a tiny handful injured. In any event, Obama's neutrality will have to give way to a definitive statement one way or the other, and soon.

nabisco, I typed something longer, but let me try to clarify something first: You're saying that instead of being able to make a decision of flipping the switch or not flipping the switch, they shouldn't have access to the switch at all? How is that functionally different from not flipping the switch?

Mordy, I don't mean it like a logic problem. (And I hope it's clear that I don't mean it argumentatively, either!)

I'm saying that a lot of logic here follows a certain path: "we need to protect Israeli citizens, and in order to do so, we may have to make decisions that harm many other people."

But there's a huge assumption in that logic -- it just assumes the authority to make those decisions. That authority isn't given to other people. For instance, you and I would probably agree that it would NOT be okay for everyone in the Gaza strip to collectively say "we need to protect our civilians, and in order to do so, we need to kill ever IDF soldier who crosses the border." Right?

So I know what you're asking me: "what, is Israel supposed to do nothing?" No, I'm not saying that. I realize this is no longer an issue of logic or ideals; it's an issue of getting results where people die less often. And sometimes having the force (or the claim on the land) puts those decisions in your hands whether it's fair or not.

But I think that when Israel is making these decisions -- or when we're talking about them -- we kind of need to remember that the authority to make them is not a given. The authority is totally borrowed and imposed on people and in no sense "fair." I think that needs to be remembered, because if we ignore it, we wind up with this "stop hitting yourself" mentality, where the Israel is saying "we set up oppressive, self-serving rules for our own protection, and what are we supposed to do if you keep testing them?"

* the IDF/Israel is saying etc.

And for the record, I don't mean "oppressive" and "self-serving" as some huge criticism, just as a fact -- an act like blockading a population to ensure your security is "self-serving" in that it's pretty obviously for your benefit, not theirs

Okay, I see what you're trying to say. At least I think I see what you're trying to say, but I'd suggest we're coming at this from different perspectives. In contemporary political philosophy, one of the major issues at hand is one of legitimacy -- Pippin describes it as "the legitimacy of the state's claim to a monopoly on the use of legitimate coercive force." So certainly the legitimacy of that claim is at issue, and if that's your question, I think it's fair, though I think it's a question on all states. Israel happens to deploy it in particularly obvious ways, but this is really the condition of state action. Part of that appears to be legitimacy conferred by presence -- ie: It's legitimate to have that monopoly because you technically do have that monopoly. Which was the context that I was bringing up the Trolly Problem. Israel presumes the legitimacy to make decisions for their citizens and for the people of Gaza. While the state exists, this is the paradigm I think we have to work with. How best can that decision be executed to help both actors in the event. You're questioning the legitimacy of that monopoly in the first place, but one reason I like the Trolly Problem is that the question of the legitimacy is built into the problem. You don't have to flip the switch and accept culpability for the crime of killing one person instead of five. That's why I asked why Israel not having access to the switch isn't equivalent to Israel not flipping the switch -- which is to say, it clearly has access to the switch. Now, is it legitimate to flip it.

I hope that makes sense.

I'm totally sympathetic to you vis-a-vis state power btw. I always rooted for Antigone over Creon. But this goes back to something else I've discussed on ILX -- the complete alienation I personally have in the face of state power. I'd always rather contest state power in domains that it doesn't seem to fully extend (places like art, myth, literature, music, which is why I write about what I write), or contest it from within state power itself -- ie through organizing, voting, discourse. But I'm very cynical of my ability to contest the state's monopoly on coercive force.

Assuming the legitimacy of that boarding video, I'm really at a loss as to why the soldiers are immediately set upon so violently. Not excusing the shooting, which seems OTT, but the dudes on the boat didn't even wait for an escalation. They (according to the video) treated the boarding party almost as an act of violence in and of itself, and reciprocated. Which is messed up. I wonder what they thought was going to happen when they one-by-one attacked a descending series of armed Israeli soldiers? IDF bullies or not, why pick a fight with a bully? Even as a PR victory this is dubious. I'm waiting to see the video clip of all the humanitarian aid the boat was carrying rather than a handful of knives and blunt weapons, since the latter seems to slight to fight for and the former would make for a much more symbolic/indignant photo op.

I have to admit, Mordy, I am amazed by that answer, because if you are constituting places like Gaza as part of "the state," aren't you kinda raising way bigger issues? (It's not exactly simpler to reduce people's participation in "the state" down to, like, just the monopoly on violence and the taxation.)

you surely accept that the trolley problem doesn't quite empirically mesh with the situation at hand, though? in the classical problem, we assume that both the group of five and the individual down path B are unrelated to the switch opearator, and to each other. with israel it's different - here you have two distinct groups, the israelis and the palestinians. one group quite clearly does not accept the authority of the operator of the switch, and it's very reasonable to expect the switch operator to be biased by the identity of the two groups between which he's choosing, rather than some ideal utilitarian desire to simply minimize suffering.

this assumes groups A & B are different - if you mean that the israeli govt (or whoever operates the 'switch') simply wants to minimize casualties of its own (if we don't do anything, x number of israelis dies, but if we do this horrible thing to a separate group of people, a lesser number dies), then you just get into the murky ethical questions of whether the lives of the other group (palestinians) are presumably worth less, thus making it okay to sacrifice their lives or liberties, or if it's the obligation of a government to protect its "own" (using that term carefully here) before it considers the needs of its outsiders, or even its enemies (or more to the point, the civilians of its enemies)

anyway i think we can mostly agree that there's hardly a healthy correlation b/w doing bad things to other people and making your own people safer, cf half of america's problems

that's an xpost

Sorry to have even derailed in the direction of that question -- I just feel like you can say a lot of sensible-sounding things from a faulty premise if you really think it's all up to your switch-flipping.

Hold on. I'm not constituting Gaza as part of 'the state.' I'm saying that at this historical moment Israel has a monopoly on certain kinds of power to use against Gaza. I think we all agree that one of the biggest issues of the conflict is that the Gaza state (as it may or may not exist) doesn't have enough of its own power to contest Israel's power. That's why I wrote above that in my eyes the biggest problem with the blockade isn't even that aid can't get through. It's that you can't be a state without being able to deal with other states through things like trade, diplomacy, etc. And if Gaza can't be a state, there really isn't a partner for Israel to negotiate with. (This speaks directly to a history of leftists in Israel trying to find people in Gaza who might be enough of a leader to somehow create this really weird kind of implicit coercive power -- which actually goes back to your first posts on this thread: How could Arafat negotiate for Palestinians if he didn't have this monopoly on power?)

But I'm speaking personally. Personally I may find the states monopoly on power illegitimate, but my venues to challenging it are severely limited. I can vote in the elections of the state that I live in, though the potency of that vote is at question often. I can resist peacefully or violently, and those methods have their various ways that they cede and retake power from the state, obv very complicated grounds that span Antigone to Gandhi. I can retreat into venues that I don't think the state completely touches (tho someone like Adorno would obviously call me a fool for doing that). I can participate in the political system to try to make changes, but that's a form of flipping the switch, not removing the state's monopoly on power.

k3v, I think you're right about the nationality bias in this case. But your second concern, about the valuation of human life, is built into the original problem.

i don't think it is, though - in the second part of my post, both group A & B are israeli - it's like sacrificing the one guy but using the mad scientist's face to smash the switch down

Okay, so that sounds like the fat man variation a little, right? Can you throw a fat man onto the tracks if it'll kill him, but it'll save the five people's lives on the tracks. Unless you believe the Palestinians at play here are the mad scientist -- that variation is generally included to discuss whether your answer changes if the villain responsible could die and save the people. I don't believe that is the case here -- we're talking about innocents. More people tend to find the fat man variation even more upsetting and reprehensible than the basic flip the switch. You're right tho that this isn't a 1:1 comparison. For one, a lot of the upset is over actually pushing the dude yourself. A lot of these political decisions are really hands off, so the meaning of your actions are never totally visible (and thus the horror is always somewhat contained, which is why I called the Israeli government thoughtless).

haha yeah i instantly regretted unwittingly making the palestinians the mad scientist there

I feel kinda shitty giving this huge explanation for why I believe I can't challenge state power, and clearly people like Glenn Greenwald believe they found a means of changing the dynamic in Israel (by trying to get the US to remove support from Israel, thus allowing other states to push against Israel more effectively). This is just the reason why on a thread like this I'm likely to feel really awful about what's going on, stumble around for possible solutions, and ultimately try to explain Israel's actions. I don't see any value in delegitimizing Israeli state power atm (not to mention all the reasons why I think Israel state power is a really important thing to have), and I'd rather try to figure out how we can work out a compromise, or at least make life less shitty for the people in Gaza. (Sometimes I feel like all decisions are just trying to find what makes things less shitty for people. It kinda blows that life feels that way. It's probably a failure of imagination on my part that I can't see a better way through things.)

well Utah Phillips said "the joy is in the struggle", and I think that speaks to a way of letting the act of resistance to power (in whatever form) become life-affirming in and of itself. I was struck by how much I agreed with your take on the problems of confronting state power, but at the same time your take seems much less optimistic than mine in terms of the value of resistance.

I do think you walk a fine line between trying "to explain Israel's actions" and sounding like an IDF press release, but I think I have a better idea of where you're coming from now. so I apologize for heated words and agree to disagree.

The thing is, if your ship is boarded by hostile, armed IDF guys, is the oar or pipe or whatever in your hand an offensive weapon or a defensive one? One thing *nobody* has been able to explain is why the IDF felt justified in boarding an aid vessel in INTERNATIONAL waters, armed or not. This is a dick move that would not be supported by any sane person or government were we discussing some other actor who had done the same to Greenpeace people, for example.

Something I wanted to address that history mayne brought up: the idea that supporters of the flotilla in Europe are some grab-bag of Muslims, the far left and anti-Americans. No, no, no, no. In Europe, there is not the pressure of groups like AIPAC throwing a spaz whenever you mention that Palestinians are actually human beings with needs and claims of their own, so people brought up to believe that apartheid and segregation are wrong and the narcissism of petty difference is misguided draw parallels with how the Israelis treat the Palestinians. These people are not anti-American or anti-Semitic (some are even Jewish or American) and as to their leftism, I think it's a broad leftism rather than oh say Tariq Ali throwing a hissy fit.

one of the people on the boat is a former american ambassador

Mairead Corrigan-Maguire was on one of the other boats

I know! She's VERY OLD. And Henning Mankell, and loads of others. I opened up my Twitter a few minutes ago to see that Roger Ebert had done an RT of sarahfuckingpalin telling all her flying monkeys to read Krauthammer and Horowitz on the flotilla to get what the mainstream is trying to hide. ARGH.

xp to Suzy above.

Just to echo that - in Europe, abhorrence of this is mainstream. At a protest yesterday evening at the Israeli embassy in Dublin, there were two backbenchers from the government party (centre-right Fianna Fail) among the speakers, both of whom had intended to be on the flotilla, until they were prevented by Cypriot police, presumably acting under instruction from Jerusalem.

Assuming it's true that these two guys were prevented from joining the flotilla: How does Jerusalem control the (presumably Northern) Cypriot police? Why do they want to stop these two guys in particular? How can they stop these two guys, but be powerless to prevent the flotilla sailing at all?

You can't even call it a left movement in Europe if you've got Tories and Fianna Fail denouncing the attacks. Ismael, they'd have passed intelligence to the elected officials through government channels.

John Humphrys is currently giving the Israeli ambassador to the UK a very hard time, while the ambassador is spinning the hell out of the 'armed flotilla' meme because he feels he is on the frontline and we in Europe are lightweights with no challenges worth comparing to it. Twat.

Assuming it's true that these two guys were prevented from joining the flotilla: How does Jerusalem control the (presumably Northern) Cypriot police? Why do they want to stop these two guys in particular? How can they stop these two guys, but be powerless to prevent the flotilla sailing at all?

No, 'southern' Cypriot police. and it wasn't just the paddies they stopped.

I think Israel has legitimate concerns about weapons being brought it on boats.

― Mordy, Tuesday, June 1, 2010 1:18 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

There's so many headaches with armed occupation.

matt otm -- israel should stop occupying gaza.

they don't occupy gaza

Wasn't the Provisional Wing of the IRA actually supposedly fairly limited memberwise until the hunger strikes where Thatcher let them starve to death, which lead to anger in nationalist communities and a huge propaganda boost to the Provisional IRA and membership increased in great numbers. The Brighton bombing was a response to the hunger strike deaths.

At least that's how it was always as perceived as being. maybe someone more in the know can correct this if it's wrong.

Was the ceasefire in effect by 1990?

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Tuesday, June 1, 2010 2:06 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

calling it the 'provisional wing of the 'ira' is always an interesting construction

the ceasefire came in 1994, but the increased support for the republican cause post-bobby sands translated more into political activity rather than more murders. i doubt that membership of the provos increased much -- not sure, though i guess the number of mi5 agents who joined went up, since that ended up doing for them. the worst years of the troubles were in the mid-late 1970s.

i suppose you could call the brighton bombing as response to the strikers' suicides three years before, but i hadn't heard it called that and the ira's statement doesn't mention them. usual boilerplate about living under occupation.

xpost

i know, that was my zing @ matt

Something I wanted to address that history mayne brought up: the idea that supporters of the flotilla in Europe are some grab-bag of Muslims, the far left and anti-Americans. No, no, no, no. In Europe, there is not the pressure of groups like AIPAC throwing a spaz whenever you mention that Palestinians are actually human beings with needs and claims of their own, so people brought up to believe that apartheid and segregation are wrong and the narcissism of petty difference is misguided draw parallels with how the Israelis treat the Palestinians. These people are not anti-American or anti-Semitic (some are even Jewish or American) and as to their leftism, I think it's a broad leftism rather than oh say Tariq Ali throwing a hissy fit.

― I eat truffle fries because my captors say they'll kill me if I don't (suzy), Tuesday, June 1, 2010 7:41 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

it wasn't me who brought this up; but actually a lot of people involved in this *are* very much anti-american and anti-semitic -- to name one of them, lauren booth, or anyone else involved in press tv.

or these dudes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3L7OV414Kk

ihh itself is affiliated with hamas -- you'll have to google for that, but im not bullshitting -- and the facebook page for the convoy -- http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=359073569674&ref=search&sid=8YdSIz92yKixYGTYuMzYSQ.1546318140..1 -- trades in 'from the river to the sea'-type slogans whose implications i don't need to point out

all that said, of course i think something needs to be done about gaza to let in basic supplies, that the israeli government is continually its second worst enemy, etc. it's just important to keep your eyes open.

n Europe, there is not the pressure of groups like AIPAC throwing a spaz

i mean, i just don't have too high a view of european commentators on these matter, what with the continent's inglorious recent history

unoccupied countries typically are able to have ships dock on their beach.

gaza is being blockaded, not occupied

which is something to debate

http://www.kibbutzvolunteer.com/

xp That history also includes war crimes trials and a cultural imperative of 'never again', laws against Holocaust denial and a broad lessening of anti-Semitism combined with the idea that Israel has a right to exist. Considering Europe's C20 struggles with fascism and anti-Semitism, we are doing OK here. We are also a lot more grown-up in our approach to interrogating Israeli self-interest and Palestinian rights than everyday people in America are.

I do feel vaguely patronized when told to keep my eyes open; this is an issue I have followed since I was about nine years old and needed to know why it was so important for Sadat and Begin to sign a peace treaty. I don't condone people who yell to kill Jews any more than you do, but then I flat out don't condone toxic numpties with guns whatever cause they lend their idiot support to.

This "press blackout" is really democracy in action, wai 2 go Israel!!eleven1111!!!

http://blogs.lancasteronline.com/courtreport/files/2010/02/david-goliath.jpg

"Gunships... open fire"

Petition for Annoying Jews of ILX Board

http://www.thestapleton.com/sly/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Ralph-Steadman-2.jpg

"Until you love us, the beatings will continue"

As long as there is a world wide outcry of this magnitude next time 10-19 Israelis, no fuck that, 10-19 of ANY people are killed I could be okay with this media storm.

How come the number isn't known yet?

Yes, the Israeli government is normally so open and transparent when it comes to matters like this

no, no, israel has to be 'held to a higher standard' than other countries (e.g., turkey), because it claims to be a democracy/beacon of human rights/____________

xpost

Wasn't the Provisional Wing of the IRA actually supposedly fairly limited memberwise until the hunger strikes where Thatcher let them starve to death, which lead to anger in nationalist communities and a huge propaganda boost to the Provisional IRA and membership increased in great numbers.

I think you're thinking of Bloody Sunday there, not the hunger strikes, die had long been cast by then

fair enough

As long as there is a world wide outcry of this magnitude next time 10-19 Israelis, no fuck that, 10-19 of ANY people are killed it becomes clear that far more than 10-19 Gazans are living lives of grinding misery that are barely worthy of the name - as a direct result of Israel's vicelike and vindictive non-occupation - I could be okay with this media storm.

"media storm"

xps. bloody sunday boosted ira membership, made them somewhat more than a loony fringe sect. hunger strikes made Sinn Féin a mainstream political party. also probably boosted membership somewhat but the political advance was the main result.

Not sure there's a meaningful difference between being occupied and blockaded for Gaza. Actually Gaza may be worse off with the blockade since some level of trade with the outside can still take place in the occupied West Bank.

But let's not hem and haw about it. Israel is trying to break the spirit of the Gaza strip by severely limiting the flow of goods. It's not something worth defending even in a qualified way, IMO.

Whoa:

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/mossad-chief-israel-is-gradually-becoming-a-burden-on-the-u-s-1.293540
Mossad Chief: Israel is gradually becoming a burden on the U.S.

Obama JAFP once again

JAFP?

One thing I don't understand: Why doesn't Israel just send the activists back to their home countries, deliver the aid, issue an apology and try to cool things off? Instead it seems to be aggravating things by holding them. Even if it finds legitimate evidence that a dozen of them turn out to be indirectly linked to some terrorist financier or something it's not going to do their side of the story any good.

Joneses After Franka Potente?

"soldiers found pistols in the hands of two of the activists who were killed, along with empty casings."

This is almost completely believable!

By the way I am beyond shocked that activists hellbent on breaking an official military blockade of Gaza might respond violently to being boarded and sabotaged by Israeli soldiers

Jewish After Forming Presidency?

Joins Assholes For Profit?

Just Another Feeble President

Jammin At Federal Plaza!

By the way I am beyond shocked that activists hellbent on breaking an official military blockade of Gaza might respond violently to being boarded and sabotaged by Israeli soldiers

― The Clegg Effect (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, June 1, 2010 1:19 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

i don't think anyone else is shocked by this, are they?

the whole point of the flotilla was, well, pretty much to provoke some kind of incident, yes? what with the repeated iteration that israel would maintain the blockade. and the refusal to dock at ashdod.

whether it's a good life strategy to respond violently, idk, the other boats seem to have thought otherwise, but no-one is surprised by it

Yeah, I'd like to see that former ambassador and that Holocaust survivor beating on the IDF with clubs. Methinks they made the right decision.

history mayne - well, the IDF certainly seemed surprised and unprepared.

wut:

A soldier identified only as a sergeant told reporters at a military briefing that the activists on board "were armed with knives, scissors, pepper spray and guns." He said he was armed only with a paintball rifle. "It was a civilian paintball gun that any 12-year-old can play with," he said. "I saw my friends on the deck spitting blood."

Paintballing in international waters. Riiiiiiiiiight.

http://www.salon.com/news/2010/06/01/new_boat_gaza/index.html

Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza Movement, which organized the flotilla, said another cargo boat was off the coast of Italy en route to Gaza. A second boat carrying about three dozen passengers is expected to join it, Berlin said. She said the two boats would arrive in the region late this week or early next week.

"This initiative is not going to stop," she said from the group's base in Cyprus. "We think eventually Israel will get some kind of common sense. They're going to have to stop the blockade of Gaza, and one of the ways to do this is for us to continue to send the boats."

This is kinda awesome and I hope it works.

From that article a week ago:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak surprised his colleagues at the meeting when he described a suggestion by journalist Eitan Haber, who reportedly proposed that the demonstrators be greeted at Ashdod by women soldiers dressed in white. They would give the activists letters destined for captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, after which their ships would be allowed to sail on to Gaza.

Another participant suggested that a collection of rockets that had been fired at the Sderot area from Gaza be put on display at Ashdod Port for the activists and foreign media to see.

The juvenile mindset here is just.. o_O

I don't know about that, the second one is definitely childish but Gilad Shalit situation is tragic imho.

they didnt think the "peace activists" will attack them (which was a mistake - if idf knew it will happen - they wouldnt try to take control over the ship the way they did) so they carried those paintballs.
but, they also carried pistols - for the worst case scenerio - which happened.

in retrospect, the whole thing was a big stupid mistake.

xxpost

Gilad Shalit situation is tragic

Sure it is. But the equation implied there, the implicit collective punishment involved, is just fucking gross.

Tom D close enough on JAFP

I didn't see it as a reminder that the blockade exists because of Shalit, esp since that's not the reason for the blockade. I just saw it as a sign of goodwill -- like here are the supplies, please release this dude. I think everyone agrees that Hamas's demands for releasing Shalit (releasing 1,000 convicted terrorists from prison) is pretty odious.

It's like passive aggressiveness raised to Level 10.

can you explain further tracer? why passive aggressive?

not enough gunshots

amateurist you don't see anything passive-aggressive about greeting pro-gaza demonstrators with female IDF soldiers dressed all in white (and presumably smiling beatifically), holding a letter to deliver to the man on whom 1000 acts of petty and not-so-petty revenge have been justified??

I mean yeah, in the end they just went with full on "aggressive", and by "aggressive" I mean "slaughter", which is more honest I guess.

lol at the idea that it's better to kill a bunch of people and "be honest" than deliver letters to a prisoner in a staged event. if that's passive aggressive, would take it over actual aggressive any day.

tracer: you mean it would have been dishonest to make that gesture when the blockade is so hurting the people of gaza?

sorry, i wasn't arguing w/ you, just trying to understand.

passive-aggressive shit should be considered something of a step-up (for both sides)

the IDF certainly seemed surprised and unprepared.

― The Clegg Effect (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, June 1, 2010 2:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

I mean yeah, in the end they just went with full on "aggressive", and by "aggressive" I mean "slaughter", which is more honest I guess.

― The Clegg Effect (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, June 1, 2010 3:56 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

sorry, just to clarify, which is it?

a - surprised
b - unprepared
c - aggressive
d - all of the above

passive-aggressive shit should be considered something of a step-up (for both sides)

I agree! Maybe eventually Israel could just make assholish symbolic gestures their usual thing instead of illegal state killing. Think big!

Oh and before anybody gets on me: YES, THE SAME GOES FOR HAMAS, TOTALLY. THEY TOO HAVE BEEN JUST TERRIBLE.

ooh, rim-shot

I still don't get what's assholish about symbolic gestures -- aren't politics 99% of the time symbolic? Isn't that kind of the point?

I think you just answered your own question

Newp.

but it wouldn't be wholly or even mostly symbolic if they actually let the aid through. it would be like a real thing with some symbolic stuff added on.

Mordy I'm not going to continue explaining why I think the journalist's proposal about soldiers dressed in white bearing a letter to deliver to a political prisoner is passive-aggressive way to greet people laden with 10,000 tonnes of aid for people those same soldiers are enforcing a lifetime of misery on. Oh wait I guess I am. Well, anyway.

didn't you just agree that passive-aggressiveness is a step-up?

This is inane, so I'm dropping it. If Tracer has a problem with symbolic gestures like sending letters to a kidnapped dude then I'm not going to argue about it.

It's totally inane - but I think it's worth reflecting on how such gimmickry could appeal to heads of state. If the issue is the blockade, then deflect, deflect, deflect..

Anyway, the Belfast Palestine Solidarity Committee is apparently sending a ship called "MV Rachel Corrie".. That'll end well.

Obama administration will stand with Israel.

Tracer, it's 25 hours from Gaza:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0601/breaking33.html

Jesus Christ why do I read the comments on these things.

xpost

I'm glad uh 'Micheál Martin' has decided to take the Israel/Palestine situation in his own hands

Jewish American Funky Princess?

justanotherfuckingpresident

^ you got it

O_o opinion piece in Slate today

http://www.slate.com/id/2255572/

The debate about the effectiveness of and justification for the Gaza blockade will be useful some day, but it has nothing to do with the raid on the flotilla.

So, the only question that is really relevant to this recent bloodshed on the high seas is about the use of excessive force against the protesters. And it is not a very interesting or complicated question.

Better information was needed. The commandos didn't know they were going to face an angry mob armed with knives and bats. Different equipment was needed: The raiders apparently didn't have enough nonlethal weapons on hand. A more creative approach was needed: Maybe a way to stop the ship without having to board it. But these are all just technical details of an operation gone sour. Those countries and organizations now wanting an "investigation" can get the answers they need without having to trouble themselves with a lengthy examination. Here's what happened: The soldiers were surprised by a mob; they saw their friends being lynched; they acted as any soldier would have and should have acted. To save their fellow soldiers, they opened fire. Civilians were killed. It's no cause for pride—but also nothing to be ashamed of.

I don't see what's so strange - presumably the last line is about the soldiers' conduct rather than the bad planning

the only surprising thing about this to me is how sloppily/shittily the IDF were with this operation. I thought those guys were all supposed to be crack commandos!

I don't see what's so strange - presumably the last line is about the soldiers' conduct rather than the bad planning

I dunno, I think dismissing different approaches (a way to stop the ship without having to board it vs. dropping commandos by helicopter in the dark) as "just technical details" is a pretty crazy way to try to say that if the blockade is justified (an argument the piece dismisses as "for another time"), then any means of enforcement is justified.

i think -- unless they're lying, and both sides do that a lot -- the idf said, please dock at ashdod, change course, etc., the people on the ship said no, then they boarded. it didn't come out of nowhere.

there blatantly is an argument to be had about the israeli/egyptian blockade. but it's in place, the free gaza convoy knew it was, and knew also that it would be enforced.

israel seems to have been really inept in doing so, but what is the right way to stop a ship?

sink it

israel seems to have been really inept in doing so, but what is the right way to stop a ship?

― truff sqwad (history mayne), Tuesday, June 1, 2010 12:45 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

really go ham, just kill everyone

yeah but that would pis of the international community no end. probably better to board it.

s f

good things i've read about this:

Robert Mackey

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2010/06/israels-aid-to-the-free-gaza-movement-or-how-to-lose-an-information-war.html

# It demonstrated--to Israel's surprise--a fairly high level of tactical incompetence. The IDF, somewhat like the French Army of 1940, has been living off of its past victories for too long. The IDF today isn't the Hagan ah of the 1930s, the Stern Gang of the 1940s or the IDF of 48, 56 or 67.
# What they could have done--let the ships in. Show the world how caring, etc. Israel is. Don't give the Free Gaza movement the PR victory; take it from them by escorting the ships in, providing Israeli "volunteers" to help unload. Have plenty of international media there for the show.

Thomas PM Barnett

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/turkey-israel-relations-2010

Trust me: Ankara has about as much interest in the Palestinians as the rest of the Muslim regimes in the region; protesting their plight is a means to larger but self-serving ends. Turkey is pursuing a policy of "zero problems" with its neighbors, all right, but elevating its regional influence requires that Ankara not be trumped by Tehran's successful nuclear bid. And that's why Turkey is now committed to demonizing its old ally across the Mediterranean.

"Declaration of war," you say? Allow me to unspin those heads a bit: Israel's three-year-old blockade of the Gaza Strip was already preapproved for official UN censure, thanks to last September's Goldstone Report. The next logical step for Israel's critics was to place it on the international front burner, dislodging the UN Security Council's regional fixation on Tehran's nuclear enrichment program. An aid flotilla loaded with one ringer (i.e., the sixth and largest ship populated with committed activists spoiling for a violent — and videotaped — showdown) was a brilliantly timed move of passive-aggression on Turkey's part. But no fight equals no media coverage, so the flotilla ignored Tel Aviv's demands that the relief supplies be off-loaded in an Israeli port for inspection and subsequent shipment to Gaza. And while the first five ships submitted peacefully to the boarding inspection parties, the sixth exploded in violent resistance — as planned.

Turkey's deputy prime minister called the raid "a dark stain on the history of humanity." So now Ankara has its bloody shirt, which will be used — once Tehran inevitably announces the weaponization of its nukes — to justify Turkey's rapid reach for the same.

IOZ

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2010/06/jewish-military-union.html

The point that really bears repeating is that the Gaza Strip is a concentration camp. I do not mean that as a metaphor or an analogy. I am not building a comparison. It isn't a figure of speech. Gaza is literally a concentration camp.

but they already knew that they'd be vilified, the int'l community (except for the US lol) is all against them - why bother pulling any punches? blockade's totally loathsome and Israel habitually gets all hard-assed about their military operations, I don't see why they'd have any problems killing a bunch of innocent people. they do it all the time in other circumstances.

xp

So now Ankara has its bloody shirt, which will be used — once Tehran inevitably announces the weaponization of its nukes — to justify Turkey's rapid reach for the same.

this seems like a bit of a stretch to me

esquirebro is otm, tho maybe not so much abt turkish nukes

that's thomas barnett's thing -- everybody wants nukes. i mean, true enough...

two angles to this thing that i'm most interested now: what does Egypt do? and what does Turkey try to do w/r/t NATO?

israel seems to have been really inept in doing so, but what is the right way to stop a ship?

in your own territory rather than international waters so that you unambiguously have the legal upper hand

the nukes angle is unnecessary - the turkey/iran power struggle is pretty evident. could this have happened a few years ago when "should turkey join the EU?" was something people could say with a straight-face?

could this have happened w/ turkey as a focus, I mean (plenty of other countries always willing to bait the most baitable country around)

one of the options they thought about was to damage the propeller of the ship.

now,the IDF seems sorry that option wasnt used.

xxpost

in your own territory rather than international waters so that you unambiguously have the legal upper hand

― i see you windin, grindin up on dat po'boy (crüt), Tuesday, June 1, 2010 6:59 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark

true

tho, you know, p sure this wd have gone down the way it went down wherever it went down

Not to harp on this, but that Rosner piece in Slate is another example of settling in with the "stop hitting yourself" logic and admitting of no other possibilities. It basically says: "There is a blockade. The IDF can legitimately enforce this blockade. If you try to circumvent the legitimacy of this blockade, what the IDF winds up doing to you is your problem."

All of which would be peachy logic if no one on earth had any questions about the moral legitimacy of the blockade, but that is just not the case. I mean, you could use this kind of thinking to come to peace with any kind of atrocity whatsoever: "The state decided on X atrocious policy. Its forces can legitimately enforce that atrocious policy. ..."

Not quite, because the shooting was a response to the soldiers being attacked, not to the breaking of the blockade. The enforcement of the blockade was in the boarding of the boat.

'stop hitting yourself' can just as easily be used to describe israel when it comes to PR / world politics, though.

been reading a lot of flip facebook updates and the like about this. have to say the sloganeering responses on every side of this issue make me sort of sick.

one said some fashionable thing like "to associate judaism and zionism is anti-semitic." uh, like try associating zionism with some other world religion then? see how that works.

i agree w/ nabisco on this one btw.

needless to say other regional gov'ts being totally hypocritical about this but that's been their MO for 62 years.

actually, to nuance that very slightly, iran under the shah was actually one of the first countries to recognize israel in 1948. sort of wild, isn't it?

turkey taking up the cause of palestinians is a bit of irony that goes back way longer than that

the word 'zionism' is basically useless in 2010.

the word 'zionism' is basically useless in 2010.

― iatee, Tuesday, June 1, 2010 9:57 PM (52 seconds ago) Bookmark

otm. i don't remember it being used in the 1990s, and it seems to be a way to take everything back to first principles every time.

I disagree. I dunno if equating Judaism with zionism is anti-semitic (obviously they're related), but they are not interchangeable concepts, and it is possible to be a Jew without being a zionist.

not EQUATING dude, ASSOCIATING. important difference.

also: thanks for presuming i am an idiot!

sorry no presumption intended I agree with you fwiw

when u presume u make a pres out of u and me

and yes although it's not smart to equate zionism and judaism (believe me, this is NOT a mistake i would make), it's not necessarily "anti-semitic" either.

also hate the way the word "zionism" provokes kneejerk reactions among leftists (jewish and non), like the word "fascism" does in the general population. i mean, jesus, a lot of crimes have been committed in the name of zionism but that's true of, i dunno, socialism as well. does the idea of a jewish state--even if you ultimately disagree w/ it--seem so far beyond the pale that the word "zionism" should provoke an instant chill?

anyway, sorry, this is a distraction.

my post wasn't clear - what I was disagreeing with was the term zionism falling out of use/favor. which was a separate point from my second sentence. sorry.

fwiw I can't recall a time in my life when the term zionism was not common linguistic currency among Jews

xp

maybe it's the narcissism of small differences but knee-jerk would-be-revolutionary leftist intellectuals really irritate me. and there's a LOT of them in my field.

What they could have done--let the ships in. Show the world how caring, etc. Israel is. Don't give the Free Gaza movement the PR victory; take it from them by escorting the ships in, providing Israeli "volunteers" to help unload. Have plenty of international media there for the show.

hahahaha what israel is this guy talking about

The use of the word "Zionism" tends to accompany a with-us-or-against-us mentality for both sides, I think. I particularly dislike it because it implies that one is either anti-Palestinian (Zionist) or against the existence of a Jewish state in Israel. Whereas, while I don't like to call myself a Zionist, I tend to think that a one-state solution is pie in the sky and I don't think that destroying a 62-year-old state at this point is a good option either.

I don't know if I qualify as one of those or not lol

I have a problem with ethnocentric states in principle, that this one happens to be for my particular ethnicity just makes it all the more depressing/frustrating

so many x-posts

"see what the hulk should've done here is reasoned with his opponents"

NO HULK ANGRY SMASH

zionism as we know it is a 19th-century concept. it's really fascinating, actually. there are both dubious and admirable figures associated w/ it, and a lot of complexity. but a lot of the aforementioned leftist intellectuals seem to like to bolster their cred by taking the arab states' former line on zionism, namely that's "a form of racism."

btw most of those intellectuals are jews fwiw.

can somebody please give me a reason why anyone should be using the word 'zionist'? there are many better ways to categorize the many, many political opinions that are associated w/ jewish and israeli people around the world. but I guess 'zionist' allows you to paint them all with one broad, ahistorical brush.

xp

I have a problem with ethnocentric states in principle

well, you know, fine, but most states did not come about in accordance with high principles, and it's kind of interesting how this one in particular gets its legitimacy challenged on the reg when others don't

what basis *should* states be founded on?

'zionist' seems to mostly be a way of distinguishing the good jews xp

Not to get into semantic games, but it's really a religious state more than an ethnic state (Russian Jews, Ethiopian Jews and Moroccan Jews being about as ethnically different as any other three groups).

The world is full of ethnocentric and/or religio-centric states. I mean pretty much all the Arab states are implicitly Arab-centric. In fact the formation of a Jewish state was particularly upsetting as it coincided with burgeoning Arab nationalism in the region as the British Empire receded.

well any state that's designed to privilege one ethnic group over another is going to end up being racist in practice as well as principle imho. there are plenty of examples of this. but my issues with zionism are also historical and political - in that the creation of Israel was a last gasp of colonialism AND collective guilt, with a fairly tenuous historical rationale attached to it (I don't see why the Jews' claim on the territory is any more legitimate than any other of the numerous groups that have occupied that particular strip of land over the last few thousand years). Just the whole entitlement involved in the creation of the state - "this is ours cuz God said so. Also so did these foreign powers who are sorry for treating us like shit for the last 2,000 years, lol now get out" - is just gross.

but I'm sure you've heard all this haha

x-posts

afaict common usage of Zionist is meant to denote someone (usually Jewish) who believes in the fundamental right of Jews to have their own state in Israel. if you go back farther into the history of the term/movement it gets a bit more convoluted, but that's the short-hand.

btw, I know some jews use the word 'zionist' too, but very similar to the word 'liberal' it has lost any real meaning and is just a vague pejorative that probably isn't using outside of a historical context

xp

The world is full of ethnocentric and/or religio-centric states. I mean pretty much all the Arab states

yeah real models for success aren't they

TONS OF X-POSTS

iatee -- "zionism" refers to the desire for an independent jewish state. that state now exists in the form of israel. so, a smattering of people who are somehow zionists but not supporters of israel (they exist!), zionism has become synonymous with support for the continued existence of israel as a state devoted to maintaining a homeland for the jewish people. i agree that at this point in history it's not a very useful term in a realpolitik context (as opposed to the context of political philosophy).

israel sort of defies the relgious/ethnic distinction. maybe it's best to say it's psuedo-religious. israel is NOT a theocracy or a state founded in any substantive respect on religious principles. some of its key founders, like moshe dayan, were completely secular. only some zionists actually think or argue that israel has a god-given right to exist. some think they have a moral right.

the bottom line is that the jewish people are sort of unique. i don't mean that in a value way like "the jews are like a precious snowflake." no, just that they really are unique in terms of the history of peoples on earth.

anyhoo.

the worst offenders re. identifying zionism and jews are of course many of the palestinians. in a way this is historically understandable, if indefensible at this point in time. but i think it's to the point where it's just reflexive. i think a lot of palestinians growing up in gaza or refugee camps will just think of "zionists" and "jews" as synonyms. hence the disconcerting chants of "kill the jews!" or "get rid of the jews!" etc.

i have really mixed feelings about all this. on the one hand, it's important to disentangle the somewhat distinct histories of anti-semitism in e.g. europe and post-48 anti-semitism in the arab/moslem world. AIPAC and other pro-israel organizations get a lot of mileage from identifying those two things, as if palestinian militants were the 2nd coming of hitler. at the same time, i'm not going to excuse or explain away a lot of the really virulent racial hatred on either side..

SHOULD BE "iatee -- "zionism" refers to the desire for an independent jewish state. that state now exists in the form of israel. so, a smattering of people who are somehow zionists but not supporters of israel ASIDE"

that probably isn't using = that probably isn't *worth* using

what basis *should* states be founded on?

well you could treat everybody equally under the law, for starters, at least in principle. (seems to me the more problematic question is "how do you draw borders" rather than "what principles should we use" when it comes to creating a state)

xp

yes, thats the question im asking

q: does the intl waters thing ~matter~ in any of this for you guys, like ethically? @Ismael: if it is unlawful to forcibly board someones vessel in intl waters (piracy!), then the occupants of that vessel ought to be able to respond in kind (under the "law," if such a thing can be said to exist on the high seas).

point being: a violent response by the flotilla to Israeli aggression might be horribly ill-advised, but not like illegitimate. whereas the Israeli boarding actually is kinda unlawful.

basically: seems like these stop hitting yrself arguments hinge on the fact that Israel was perfectly entitled to board/respond, in the way that the police are entitled to arrest you if they catch you mugging someone. but they ~weren't~.

so then you have to consider: were the ppl in the flotilla entitled to have weapons (yes), and to respond to aggression while in intl waters? yes. should they have had weapons and responded violently? no, imo, but there it is. did the Israeli troops have the right to defend themselves? yes. was their response disproportionate to the perceived threat? yes, imo.

should Israel be criticized for a) creating the incident and b) mishandling it in the grossest way? absolutely. I mean ffs if yr gonna board terrible dangerous aid ships, wait until they're actually in ur fucking ZONE before shooting everyone

what basis *should* states be founded on?

well you could treat everybody equally under the law, for starters, at least in principle. (seems to me the more problematic question is "how do you draw borders" rather than "what principles should we use" when it comes to creating a state)

xp

― in my day we had to walk 10 miles in the snow for VU bootleg (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, June 1, 2010 4:18 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i agree in principle but the issue of borders and rights are not extricable! one question being, who gets to decide whether they're a part of this country or the other one!

well you could treat everybody equally under the law, for starters, at least in principle.

israel does this, iirc?

but states get formed in a whole bunch of fucked up ways, usually by violence, sometimes by colonial partition, whatever. it's terrible and fucked up but that's human history, and while that doesn't remotely "justify" all the violence done to all the victims down the centuries, it's something to keep in mind.

so it may offend principle that israel is what it is, but in 2010, are we really still talking about whether it "ought" to exist? partition was an incredible disaster for india/pakistan, neither of which have much meaning as "nation-states" outside of the colonial context, but that's what we/they have now.

q: does the intl waters thing ~matter~ in any of this for you guys, like ethically?

according to israel and its boosters it was legit under the laws relating to blockade anyway?

im not a maritime lawyer as you can guess

You won't be surprised to hear Dershowitz thinks the same.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/israels-actions-were-enti_b_596285.html

hey I think we all agree that creating states is a messy and unpleasant business. Given the last 60+ years I think it's pretty clear that undertaking that particular endeavor in the case of Israel was a BAD IDEA. It can't be easily undone so I agree that arguing about whether Israel "ought" to exist is increasingly beside the point - because it exists now, and it's going to exist in some form for a long time to come. What can be undone is Israel's identity as an ethnocentric (yes I'm gonna keep using that term for the sake of convenience) state - the one-state solution.

I don't think everybody is treated equally under Israeli law...? Jewish right of return, Jewish National Fund, fucked up marriage laws etc.

x-posts

israel does this, iirc?

lol wuuuuuuut

shakey's otm

Amateurist, you know more about this than I do, so I'm asking: is it possible that part of the problem is that the broad part of Zionism -- the idea of a home state -- is a lot closer to settled, so a lot of uses of the word now cluster around things that are more extreme? Like in terms of people's ideologies, these days we pretty often hear "Zionism" brought up in, say, discussions of settlers who feel they have a moral right to land beyond existing lines. I.e., we keep attaching Zionism to hot disputes about expansion and land, and not to less-controversial things like the existence of the state itself.

Was gonna say. I definitely think there should be an Israel, but I use Zionist to describe someone who thinks settlement rights take precedence above all other claims, especially those of Muslims. You can be a Zionist w/o being Jewish - look at neocons.

christian zionism isn't incompatible with anti-semitism, even. oh, it's all so confusing

I don't think everybody is treated equally under Israeli law...? Jewish right of return, Jewish National Fund, fucked up marriage laws etc.

yeah i don't think there is total and absolute equality and that's bad, but it doesn't deserve a lol whut answer. though imperfect, a little like the US through almost its entire history (is there legal equality in arizona?). israel isn't an apartheid state. i get the one state solution as an ideal, kind of, but there's no logical/historical basis for the borders of said single state that makes it more just than a two-state solution. do kind of wonder what the nature of the one-state state would be, too.

Maybe we need Third Wave Zionism.

Many xposts @gbx - not sure how much help I can be as Law of the Sea isn't really my thing, and I'm unaware of (i) where the incident actually took place (it does appear from the maps to be a long way from the coast) and (ii) what the legal basis is for the blockade of Gaza at all (I assume that Israel claims jurisdiction over Gazan waters in some occupation-type way). Also, my book's a little bit old. However, I'm guessing I'm probably the best-qualified here to have a stab:

* PIRACY/SELF-DEFENCE

- the boarding certainly wasn't piracy, because piracy is a private vessel attacking other vessels for private ends. This was a state act. The vessel was a private boat, however, not a warship - so any right of self-defence should be understood in the normal personal way, rather than thinking about one country fighting off an attack by another. Did the commandos pose a threat to the people on the boat such as would justify their attacking them? We don't know, frankly, and I haven't watched the videos to find out. In any case it's difficult to know how to analyse that, because we don't know what law they'd be defending themselves under - it's probably Turkish law because it's a Turkish boat, but it might be Israeli law depending on where it was. In any case, the question should be something like: at the time of boarding, were the people on the boat in physical danger such as would justify attacking the boarding soldiers with metal bars as a means of making that danger stop?

* JURISDICTION

- generally speaking, the high seas are free and a state needs jurisdiction in order to board a vessel. It could get this in a very few ways, e.g.
: the vessel flies its flag (I think Turkey in this case)
: the vessel is committing an offence over which the state has jurisdiction (e.g. piracy or the slave trade, but also a few relatively trivial things like illegal broadcasting)

- the territorial sea is the strip of sea along the coast, usually up to twelve miles (don't know much Israel claims) over which the state does exercise jurisdiction. Generally speaking, a merchant ship (I think this means all non-warships) has right of innocent passage through the territorial sea of any state - but it ceases to be innocent passage if it partakes in certain activities, breach of customs being one of those, in which case it's no longer innocent. The state can board to investigate e.g. a crime disturbing peace and good order, which I presume Israel considers blockade-busting to be.

NON-CONCLUSION

So (with all the above caveats) if this was in Israel's waters, Israel would probably have the right to board and interdict the vessel. If it was on the high seas, they probably wouldn't - however, I have some difficulty in believing that e.g. the US wouldn't intercept a drugs boat that's lying thirteen miles off Miami, so perhaps there's some obvious principle that I'm not aware of.

Israel isn't an apartheid state.

It discriminates between its citizens according to their race and religion - and awards different privileges and imposes different obligations in light of such discrimination, and by force of law. So yes, it is an apartheid state now.

I thought of something else: Israel could also assert self-defence to intercept the vessel if it believed it was carrying a threat e.g. previous interceptions of arms shipments. This would be a state-type self-defence and so not exactly like the one I set out for the people on the boat, though they're pretty similar concepts. One hears of other countries intercepting and diverting ships from time to time for terrorism-related reasons or whatever - this is presumably the rationale in those cases too.

It discriminates between its citizens according to their race and religion - and awards different privileges and imposes different obligations in light of such discrimination, and by force of law. So yes, it is an apartheid state now.

― sonofstan, Tuesday, June 1, 2010 11:15 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

said it was imperfect, and therefore open to criticism by the US in particular with its long history of racial equality, but i guess im objecting to the implied south african comparison which is, how you say, disproportionate.

Usually people use the "apartheid" canard to refer to Israel's treatment of Gaza and the West Bank. This doesn't work because Gazans and West Bankers are not second-class citizens of an apartheid state, but rather residents of an occupied territory (not that this is better, just making a distinction).

If you leave aside the occupied territories, you can't really equate Israel's treatment of its Arab citizens with Apartheid South Africa. However flawed and unequal Israel may be, you didn't have integrated areas like Jaffo in Johannesburg. You didn't have black members of South African parliament. You didn't have substantial numbers of black students going to top South African universities. Etc.

^^ these analogies are never going to get very far so long as half the people we're concerned with exist in a non-category somewhere between citizens and refugees and occupied foreigners. (for instance, right now, mayne, I actually don't have any idea which category you are placing people in; you are not considering gaza-strip residents "citizens," right?)

never mind, xpost

said it was imperfect, and therefore open to criticism by the US in particular with its long history of racial equality, but i guess im objecting to the implied south african comparison which is, how you say, disproportionate.

oh ffs

pretty sure that was some sarcasm there gbx

to Israel's credit, there is no "3/5ths of a person" clause in their Constitution, and citizens are all supposed to be equal under the law. Aside from the other (fairly minor) things I already noted tho, the fact that Israeli gov't claims political dominion over a whole bunch of non-citizens is where the real mistreatment comes into play.

no shit

just unproductive high horsey sneering imo. "hey American you literally cannot criticize ppl for acting like disgusting savages because yr country did slavery and w/e" = bullshit and unproductive

I mean whatever it was probably just a bit of fun

xps

xpost - the sarcasm is the annoying part! by that logic we should just all have slaves, since nobody has quite the right history to take the moral high ground about it.

(by the way, the thing that frustrates me about discussing South Africa analogies is that a lot of responses would seem to imply that South Africa would have been morally improved by not considering non-white people real citizens in the first place, which strikes me as ... an odd stance)

Amateurist, you know more about this than I do, so I'm asking: is it possible that part of the problem is that the broad part of Zionism -- the idea of a home state -- is a lot closer to settled, so a lot of uses of the word now cluster around things that are more extreme? Like in terms of people's ideologies, these days we pretty often hear "Zionism" brought up in, say, discussions of settlers who feel they have a moral right to land beyond existing lines. I.e., we keep attaching Zionism to hot disputes about expansion and land, and not to less-controversial things like the existence of the state itself.

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Tuesday, June 1, 2010 4:44 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

like suzy said i think a lot of people do now use "zionist" to characterize the people pushing for an expansion of israeli territory into the west bank etc. but that's not what the arab states meant when they pushed through the "zionism = racism" statement in the UN. and it's certainly not what many palestinians and other arabs mean when they chant about zionists/jews (militants rarely use the term "israelis" because that term refers to a state which they feel is illegitimate). it's an ahistorical use of the word which i'm inclined to disagree with, if only because the opprobrium it invokes is then made to cover (mixed metaphor?) the whole history of zionism. which isn't free of its own crimes or even, i think, moral incoherence.

but yeah in a way the word is not practically useful because it centers around a DESIRE to see a jewish state. now there IS a jewish state, so it's less a question of whether it has a right to exist and more a question of, how does a tactically superior state actor deal with a neighboring state actor that wishes them harm? does it deal with it in a way that emiserates the population of that neighboring state--something it clearly has the capability of doing? that seems to be a misguided choice, both ethically (obv) and practically.

i think some of the posts above speak about gaza as if it weren't a state. it's not a very functional state, partly due to israel and partly due to hamas, but it does have an elected government. whether gaza constitutes its own state or part of a broader palestinian state that's presently divided is one of the weirder questions in this whole situation. in a way it's starting to resemble the whole taiwan/PRC situation where at least of the 1980s both sides claimed to be the legit rulers of "china" while neither, practically, governed the full territory they conceived of as "china."

honestly you look at a place like gaza that seems condemned to misery and you've gotta wonder if a one-state solution isn't the only answer for them. that said, you look at the militancy in gaza, the way so many of its children are basically raised to dehumanize the israeli enemy, and you wonder if a one-state solution is possible in the next 70 years.

ok i'm done, sorry.

Amateurist that smells off to me, like some colonial divide and rule propaganda.

I mean I dunno an awful lot about middle east politics but are you saying they only have themselves to blame? Chicken and egg and all that but wtf?

no. not in the slightest. you're reading into my comments stuff that simply isn't there.

i'm just saying it's a weird situation where the palestinian authority claims to be the rightful state actor for the palestinian state which encompasses west bank and gaza. and hamas claims the same. except that the PA has no practical control in gaza and hamas has little authority in the west bank.

this situation arguably complicates things for all parties involved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah-Hamas_conflict

i mean, it's a mess:

Ismail Haniyeh (Arabic: إسماعيل هنية‎ Ismaʻīl Haniyya; sometimes transliterated as Ismail Haniya or Ismail Haniyah) ( Arabic pronunciation (help·info)) ; (born January 29, 1963) is a senior political leader of Hamas and one of two disputed Prime Ministers of the Palestinian National Authority, the matter being under political and legal dispute. He became Prime Minister after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas conflict, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continues to exercise prime ministerial authority in the Gaza Strip.[1] The Palestinian Legislative Council also continues to recognise his authority.

Thanks, I guess Im still wondering if Israel likes to help keep it this way- to keep the land grab going and the people divided?

Which begs the question, where does the illegal appropriation of Palestininan land by Israel fit into your scheme as a driver for this internal political division, obstacle to the creation of a viable Palestinian State, dehumanisation of Israelis and so on?

land grab lol

yes, use 'apartheid' instead

it doesnt beg the question, it raises the qeustion

"you wonder if a one-state solution is possible in the next 70 years."

ppl said same about Northern Ireland 30 years ago. A US prez who didn't cater to Zionist maniacs would be a nice start.

finally, some nuanced political opinions itt

It doesn't do anything to a question. For all of Israel's faults, and the moral bankruptcy of allowing radical Orthodoxy to settle throughout the West Bank, I'm not sure how you can characterize Israel as land grabbing after they evicted 25 settlements and nine thousand residents from Gaza + the West Bank in 2005. Or do you consider that a smokescreen for the super secret land grabbing they were doing in the background?

Which begs the question, where does the illegal appropriation of Palestininan land by Israel fit into your scheme as a driver for this internal political division, obstacle to the creation of a viable Palestinian State, dehumanisation of Israelis and so on?

― kiwi, Tuesday, June 1, 2010 8:55 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

talk about begging the question!

i mean i think you know the answer to your own question. it hasn't helped. it's really bad. and it's continued more or less under every administration no matter their official policy on new settlements. israel has not appropriated land in gaza as far as i know, but i don't know how relevant that is.

haven't settlements continued though--new ones, i mean? it seems that israel is forever talking out of both sides of their mouth on this issue.

No new settlement building in a bit, I believe. There was that whole natural expansion of current settlements debate thing.

by request:

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2010/06/carnage-cruise.html

Thank god, Dennis Perrin is here to solve the conflict.

Btw, amateurist: http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20100601/pl_usnw/DC13636

No new settlements since the beginning of 2010. So way more recent than I thought, but still completely halted.

by whose request????

too bad he muddled a decent post with this statement

Numerous poor brown people butchered in the defense of humanity.

I'm glad I read that Perrin piece for the insight into Israel's propensity to destroy themselves in a mad rage of suicide. Btw, Perrin means literal suicide. Not like political suicide. He thinks Israel is gonna blow itself up because the tide is turning against them. Like that time in the Yom Kippur war when they were losing and so blew themselves up. Man, that was short-sighted of them.

is he referencing masada?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masada#The_Roman_siege

which raises the question: what does john zorn have to say about all this?

you could even say it begs the question

hey, i actually used that phrase correctly upthread, unlike 99% of the times people use that phrase.

so 9000 land grabbers down... just 400,000 to go!

dude I think there are more israelis than that

anyway, don't you mean that Britain illegally land grabbed? since the Israelis got the land legally. well, then there was that war when Israel got attacked and took more land, so i guess that's also land grabbing. anyway, what's your point? should all the Jews move back to their ancestral home of Lower East Side?

Mordy, that's nice news you linked, but let's not exaggerate or anything with that "completely halted":

"Prime Minister Netanyahu has fulfilled his promise of last November to impose a ten-month moratorium on new construction in the West Bank," said AJC Executive Director David Harris. "Let's remember that Israel's bold decision to freeze new construction was an unprecedented good-faith gesture intended to move the Palestinian Authority to resume direct negotiations, yet, despite the Israeli action, President Abbas has still refused to return."

I mean, not trying to be glib or argumentative, but the "good-faith gesture" of a temporary moratorium on something even Israel's staunch allies consider a gigantic problem is like ... I dunno what that's like.

two issues. One is new settlements and one is freezing settlement building in actual settlements afaik. i could be wrong tho.

The Israeli government moratorium, however, does allow for completion of about 3,000 housing units in existing communities that were started before November 26, 2009.

wouldn't any palestinian 'good-faith gesture' also be something that most of us would agree should be something they should be doing anyway?

er too many 'be somethings'

Nabisco, I could be reading it wrong but:

The Israeli government moratorium, however, does allow for completion of about 3,000 housing units in existing communities that were started before November 26, 2009.

means that they're grandfathered in since they were slated from Nov 2009. So existing communities construction got grandfathered in, completely new settlements didn't and aren't going on. But I could be wrong! I'm hunting for answers but it's hard to find data on settlements (probably because many of them are illegal wrt to Israel too! i don't know when the last time the government actually sponsored brand new settlements was!)

okay, apparently i'm wrong, this looks like a government sponsored settlement from last year: http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel-begins-new-settlement-despite-u-s-opposition-1.276244

so i take it back.

anyway, i think i'm dropping this thread for awhile. i think the current israeli government sucks in a million ways and i feel like shit every time i try to argue for some nuance in the situation when i'd rather be bitching about how much Bibi sucks. kiwi, i recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Operation-Shylock-Confession-Vintage-International/dp/0679750290 -- It might give you some ideas.

xpost - Mordy, all I was saying was that ... if you happen to be of the opinion that settlements are kind of an independent aggressive act that shouldn't be happening, full stop, the idea of a temporary halt to construction as a noble good-faith gesture is a little weird.

And yes, of course the same applies to loads of violence coming from occupied territory.

(In fact, part of why the settlements are interesting to me is that they're an area where Israel, despite having working top-down state authority that Palestinians don't, sometimes seem to lack the political will to do things like restrict settlers or clear out illegal settlements, because it looks bad to the public -- which is like a tiny version of the problem Palestinian leadership has with basically everything.)

seriously israel needs to evict all of the settlers, resettle them in the pre-67 borders, and that's that. there's no way to understand the settlements except as a kind of creeping colonialism. as sharon was fond of saying, changing the "facts on the ground."

i guess the problem is that likud gov't has no interest in doing this, and if liberal gov't did this they would get stomped on in subsequent elections?

lots of good debate itt. refreshing compared to the inflammatory axe-to-grind hatefests I have seen elsewhere.

was thinking same thing, even in the context of ilx

was thinking abt this thread earlier today and what amateurist says about the illegal settlements absolutely having to go as a precondition for any progress whatsoever seems very otm to me.

"you wonder if a one-state solution is possible in the next 70 years."

ppl said same about Northern Ireland 30 years ago. A US prez who didn't cater to Zionist maniacs would be a nice start.

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, June 2, 2010 3:01 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

morbius,,, what the fuck are you talking about?!

seriously, what?

northern ireland isn't a single state now, nor was it thirty years ago. but sinn fein/ira was talking about a single state for *the whole of ireland* that would displace the existing republic. now, that hasn't happened either.

while we're on the subject of terrible things the brits did c. 1922 -- "anyway, don't you mean that Britain illegally land grabbed?" woah, hey, come on, mordy. it was a league of nations mandate, and n e ways who was the land being grabbed from? the ottoman empire, the og land-grabbers in the region. the idea was to set up a jewish state without prejudice to the existing population, yes? whatever, the brits weren't being illegal.

Another way of saying this is: who will Israel blame from now on? Are they essentially hoping that hardline groups like Hamas will fill the spotlight, lending more justification to their activities? Is cutting off Arafat maybe a way of racheting up the conflict, giving them license to do, well, whatever they want?

― [nabisco], Thursday, 13 December 2001 01:00 (8 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nabisco.... otm

Personally never quite understood the obsessive global focus on Israel, a tiny dysfunctional country surrounded by bigger dysfunctional countries in a world full of dysfunctional countries that treat their own people or their neighbors like shit. Settlements should def. stop, but then, in the scheme of things, the settlements are some of the least egregious/atrocious state-supported actions being executed on a regular basis. And yet they're all it takes to stir the pot, or at least this particularly hyper-inflated pot. I mean, are any borders legitimate or less than arbitrary? Can any borders be defended on historical grounds beyond that of "land grab," spoils of war, cartographic meddling or shady dealings?

Anyway, just frustrating. I understand the import of the region, and its relationship to other conflicts, but, like, get in line.

Personally never quite understood the obsessive global focus on Israel, a tiny dysfunctional country surrounded by bigger dysfunctional countries in a world full of dysfunctional countries that treat their own people or their neighbors like shit.

they're white?

Ha, that would explain part of it. Or whiter, at least.

Every ILX Israel discussion seems to go through the exact same motions.

Hey Josh in Chicago; it's 'cause everyone hates the Jews.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUwbZ9AlSPI

in the scheme of things, the settlements are some of the least egregious/atrocious state-supported actions being executed on a regular basis.

I can't agree with this. "Expanding settlements" is a classic tactic for rulers to eliminate enemies. It was Saddam Hussein's preferred method of expanding his influence, for example. Just get more and more Sunnis moving onto more and more Shiite and Kurdish land. Eventually either their culture and identity break apart and become subsumed or they get fed up and leave. But where will Palestinians leave to?

Point being, with so many states actively eliminating its enemies in the most horrible way possible (e.g. rape and machete campaigns in Congo or Sudan), Israel's settlements, bad though they may be, produce disproportionate outrage. Does not invalidate the outrage, but it reveals a lack of perspective to compare, say, Saddam Hussein's preferred method of expanding his influence and Israel's own policies. At least at this juncture. Maybe future Israel will transgress to that degree, in which case, kudos on your prognostication.

See also China (xpost)

I think the outrage with Israel stems from it being supported (in different ways) by the United States and the European Union - i.e. by us, or by our governments. Our governments are not complicit in things going on in the Sudan in the same way. So with Israel, there is at least the possibility that we could apply pressure on Israel to make it stop doing the bad things it is doing.

Israel's settlements, bad though they may be, produce disproportionate outrage

Maybe if the Israeli and its supporters didn't strut about ballyhooing about what a free and wonderful democracy Israel is and just admitted it was fairly squalid and scummy little Middle Eastern state then we'd be less inclined to react the way we do.

If their supporters at least admitted Israel was not as impressive a democracy as even Turkey, that'd be a start

Yeah, I can see that. We're outraged because unlike so many other tragedies, we feel more invested and able to evince a change. Even if that's a collective delusion. I mean, "where will the Palestinians leave to" presumes there's a correct place for them to be. But every single national border on the planet was formed either by compromise, treaty or act of attrition.

Turkey experienced military coups in 1960, 1971 and 1980, and had the government forced out by the military in a quasicoup in 1997, so not sure that assertion stacks up at all.

You want to compare a decades-long policy of settlement expansion which fragments and grinds away the identity of a subjugated people with, say, raping and killing a little girl? Why? So you can say "at least Israel doesn't have a policy of raping and killing little girls?" Talk about kudos! Well done Israel! Setting the bar high!! They can assassinate political enemies, maintain a siege on a million-person concentration camp, and "settle" on land that they took by force, but as long as there are no actual machete campaigns my outrage at all this is disproportionate. At this juncture. Interesting. I suppose I should give Israel the benefit of the doubt here. They've earned it, what with not raping and knifing little girls in any obvious, official way. And as for that other stuff - hey, borders get drawn, right? Who among us is without sin? Everybody does it.

Turkey experienced military coups in 1960, 1971 and 1980, and had the government forced out by the military in a quasicoup in 1997, so not sure that assertion stacks up at all.

Balls, Spain was a fascist dictatorship till 1974, waht does that prove

Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a duck

34 years ago is a lot longer than 13. And Spain did explicitly turn away from military coups in 1981.

This exchange yesterday I found interesting:

One of my very brightest Jewish friends from school is Israeli-born and heavily invested in Zionism (let's just say a cousin of hers has been in a coma for four years). I am reluctant to discuss it with her because her emotionalism around I/P is completely at variance to how coolly and logically she looks at any other issue.

― I eat truffle fries because my captors say they'll kill me if I don't (suzy), Monday, 31 May 2010 10:59 (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I basically feel the same about those heavily invested in anti-Zionisim

― Ismael Klata, Monday, 31 May 2010 11:07 (2 days ago) Bookmark

This flotilla story sums up for me how a) Israel squanders any good will it may have had and shoots itself in the foot with its actions, e.g. the blockade itself b) its democracy does flourish (check the Israeli media) and c) how people around the world do indeed (Josh is 100% right) get disproportionately wound up about it.

otm

Wow, excuse me for getting disproportionate about Gaza. Really, what was I thinking? I guess I need to post about all the other absolutely horrible, grinding atrocities around the world first, so that I can prove I'm not focusing, like, too much on poor old Israel. Lead the way, though, Daniel and Josh. Who else should we be talking about on this thread?

Back to Josh's point about all property being theft, so fuck it - it's true, so many borders were basically drawn with blood. Like the French border with Germany, or the US border with Mexico, or whatever borders American Indian territories have. So I guess we'll just keep on truckin with the violent conflict and genocide model of map-making. It just plain works! We could apply this to other things too. Consider the making of a shirt. For most of human existence, it was women who made them, for free, for their husbands and children. Think of the money we could save on our wardrobe budgets if we just relied on this simple, time-tested mechanism.

otm, I spend too much on shirts

fairly squalid and scummy little Middle Eastern state then we'd be less inclined to react the way we do... If their supporters at least admitted Israel was not as impressive a democracy as even Turkey, that'd be a start

― Wenlock & Mandelson (Tom D.), Wednesday, June 2, 2010 1:17 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark

hmm, ok

probably better take this to the "turkey to kurds: 'suck it'" thread

oh no, we don't have one

"Disproportionate" only in a world where history, religion and social/cultural psychology dont exist,if only Moses was found down the Congo instead of the Nile eh!

"Who else should we be talking about on this thread?"

Totally missing the point.

I've come across so many people who don't bat an eyelid when it comes to issues like the Burmese regime, the massacres in Congo and Sudan, for example, yet when the subject of Israel comes up they become extraordinarily agitated. Just talking about my own experience.

Tracer, we should just make war illegal. That would do it, right?

The ironies really do abound. The only reason Israel is held up (wrongly) as a paragon of democracy and human rights is in comparison to its direct neighbors and antagonists. Similarly, Israel may smugly operate with "restraint," but that smug restraint is all that's kept it from "solving" its problems the way they would have been (wrongly) solved in any other era. I truly believe in a Palestinian state, at least as much as I believe in an Israel. But I'm also not willing to believe that given the way things stand, a freshly minted Palestine would not immediately declare war on Israel, or at least continue to fight, which would be their right, were Israel ever willing to cede that right. It's a sea of Catch-22s.

Ultimately, any self-interested state will eventually understand the benefit of stasis and stability, as far as that goes, but no one can force either side to reach that point. Which is of course stating the obvious. But as long as there are either explicitly or tacitly state-supported objectors on both sides who would rather die than back down or compromise, this will play out for decades more. All borders may be drawn in blood, but at some point enough blood is spilled that the players decide enough is enough. The map is drawn when the blood dries.