the USA, Israel, and national interest

well I'm glad she decided to quit politics and have indiana jones adventures full time

we should all be so lucky

In case anyone wonders where Brian Eno stands:
...
Gaza is now an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly...and, surprise, surprise - they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment?

Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now 'under attack' you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn't possibly reach an accommodation.

And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing their homeland.

http://www.counterpunch.org/eno01022009.html

paw paw hebrew blowtorch

The Israelis are a gifted and resourceful people

Now 'under attack' you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn't possibly reach an accommodation.

And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing their homeland.

http://www.counterpunch.org/eno01022009.html

― vermonter, Friday, January 2, 2009 8:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

I don't think this is right. I mean it has some elements of right, but it's simplistic, and it displays a failure to distinguish between the current situation in Gaza and the current situation in the West Bank which are, fwiw, under different respective governments. I don't see any evidence that Israel wants to "steal" Gaza, they just don't want to deal with the government that happens to have been democratically elected there, and they don't want to relinquish control of its borders and economy (or lack thereof) until there is a more harmless "government" in place. Israel went to way too much trouble to completely evacuate its paltry settlements in Gaza to suggest that it has any interest in resettling people there. That said, Eno is basically right that Israel's own actions continue to inflame the situation it claims to be trying to end, and that results in a temporarily convenient political stalemate where nothing must be risked or given up. It is worth noting that the backers of Hamas also have some interest in continuing to provoke Israel by constantly firing rockets (in fact, the rockets are useless as a military/defensive weapon and aimed at civilian areas and thus can hardly be seen as anything other than provocation).

Israel's governing Kadima party is under pressure to look strong after its perceived weakness in Lebanon and from the civilian population who does not like dodging rockets. Israel's response is unconscionable and helps to create the problem it claims to be seeking to eliminate, but I don't see it as an expansionist move.

I still think it's funny how the Palestinians democratically (yay!) elected the enemy (boo!). But anyway.

jesus christ, who the fuck asked brian eno to weigh in?

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/06_02/gaza2R1506_468x316.jpg
Lest it be forgotten, this is a picture of Hamas coming to power to in Gaza. Democratic elections not quite the whole story here.

jesus christ, who the fuck asked brian eno to weigh in?

One of the editors of Counterpunch, presumably. What's your excuse?

Paul Craig Roberts
Whatever Happened to Western Morality?

Brian Eno
Stealing Gaza: an Experiment in Provocation

Ralph Nader
America Must Stop Shirking Its Responsibility on Gaza

Jordan Sarging
Can All of You Please Shut Up? (Part 1 of 2)

Alex Cockburn
Some racist shit about 'riper ethnic cauldrons'

Lest it be forgotten, this is a picture of Hamas coming to power to in Gaza. Democratic elections not quite the whole story here.

that picture was taken well after Hamas won the elections, after a Hamas-Fatah military dust-up in which Fatah ineffectually tried to shut them down there.

I still think it's funny how the Palestinians democratically (yay!) elected the enemy (boo!). But anyway.

http://weblogs.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/politics/blog/george-w-bush-picture.jpeg

taking gaza city by strategy

Why the fuck did the US veto away a UN-call for a cease fire?

I haven't been following this very closely but I assume because Israel is arguing that the Amateur Gazan Rocketeer Corps won't respect a cease-fire anyway? I mean, a cease-fire would obligate Israel to stop bombing the shit out of Gaza, and we can't have that, otherwise how will Hamas Learn Their Lesson?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v134/tracerhand/VisitIsrael.jpg

I haven't been following this very closely but I assume because Israel is arguing that the Amateur Gazan Rocketeer Corps won't respect a cease-fire anyway? I mean, a cease-fire would obligate Israel to stop bombing the shit out of Gaza, and we can't have that, otherwise how will Hamas Learn Their Lesson?

A new Hamas cease-fire would be just about the best case scenario for Israel, and would within their minds, justify this whole thing...

Ah OK - how come?

(By the way, I think the best caption possible for the above photo is "Or visit Gaza - exactly like the Gaza in the news")

Presumably because they could say that their bombing campaign brought it about?

and to a big extent it'd be true

bombing houses give you so much more?

I haven't been following this very closely but I assume because Israel is arguing that the Amateur Gazan Rocketeer Corps won't respect a cease-fire anyway? I mean, a cease-fire would obligate Israel to stop bombing the shit out of Gaza, and we can't have that, otherwise how will Hamas Learn Their Lesson?

― Tracer Hand, Sunday, January 4, 2009 8:55 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what do you think israel wants out of this? given that the amateur gazan rocket guys have all been locked up (apparently), what *is* their beef? is it just wanton bloodlust or what?

As for what Israel wants, I think this op-ed's right about Israel's intentions in Gaza (i.e. get rid of Hamas and destabilize Gaza by killing large numbers of Gazans, cutting off supply lines and trying to show to Gazans that Hamas can't govern). Israel also prob. sees the US presidential transition period as a way to change the "facts on the ground" before Obama takes office.

Bloodlust plays a part too, imo.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1230733120252&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Israel's opening of the Gaza crossings to allow in humanitarian aid contributes somewhat to this sense of anarchy, because it makes Hamas look unable to govern. If the Palestinians must rely on Israel's green light to let food aid in from third countries, then that undercuts Hamas's argument that it is able to serve its public.
...
When it loses its ability to do this, when it loses its control of the situation, when its loses its grip on Gaza, then its legitimacy may be diminished in the eyes of its own people.

Palestinian apologists have argued since the elections that brought Hamas to power in the PA in 2006 that the Palestinian people did not really buy into Hamas's extremist ideology, that they didn't really want a Hamas government, but rather, they were just fed up with Fatah's corruption and ineffectiveness, and voted for Hamas because they wanted a government that could rule.

But Israel seems now to be betting that if Hamas can no longer govern effectively, then its public legitimacy may wane. And that, Jerusalem believes, is something that genuinely does scare Hamas.

Also, a reminder the people being bombed (from a report released Jan. 3):

80% of the population cannot support themselves and are dependant on humanitarian assistance. This figure is increasing.

According to WFP, the population is facing a food crisis. There are food shortages of flour, rice, sugar, dairy products, milk, canned foods and fresh meats.

The imports entering are insufficient to support the population or to service infrastructure maintenance and repair needs.

The health system is overwhelmed, having already been weakened by the 18- month blockade.

The utilities are barely functioning: the only electric power plant has shut down. Some 250,000 people in central and northern Gaza do not have electricity at all due to the damage to fifteen electricity transformers during the air strikes. The water system provides running water once every 5-7 days and the sanitation system cannot treat the sewage and is dumping 40 million litres of raw sewage into the sea daily. Fuel for heating, needed due to the cold weather, and cooking gas, are no longer available in the market.

There has been significant destruction in the Gaza Strip, over 600 targets hit, including roads, infrastructure, the Islamic university, government buildings, mosques and civil police stations.

etc etc etc

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=upi20090103-173505-6888&show_article=1

Good thing they're working on such an achievable goal

Next they can take on, like, England

http://www.thebricktestament.com/judges/index.html

40 people killed after tank shells fired into a school. This war's Qana moment?

2006:

http://www.darrelplant.com/images/independent_ceasefire.jpg

the most jarring atrocity on document i've seen, from the end of last month in Gaza:

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/eOPBO7Z3KT0&hl=en&fs=1";></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/eOPBO7Z3KT0&hl=en&fs=1"; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

truly reveals the extent of censorship and unexploited sensitivity keeping this stuff statistical.

&

I don't know how much it matters, but that video is probably from an accidental Qassam explosion four years ago, not from last month:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/04/terrorism/index.html
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/7n4re/a/9rj2

oh. sorry.

I don't know how much it matters

Greenwald said something similar at the end of his article... why does it not matter? I think there's a huge difference between whether this was the result of an Israeli air strike or a Hamas shipment of Qassam rockets that accidently exploded. Duh.

This is like that picture of a beaten Arab from a few years ago who turned out to be a Jew that the photographer "mislabeled."

"Israel Resumes Gaza Attack After a Pause to Allow Aid Delivery"

not the onion

Youtube videos -- not the greatest thing to happen to journalism since the daily newspaper.

On a similar tip, an Israeli I vaguely know posted a video to his facebook labeled "Hamas using children as human shields." All that could be seen in the video was an armed, masked person pulling a child across a street and a bunch of other people standing on the sidewalk. It was in no way clear that there was any human shield-usage going on or any sense of what the situation was. But unfortunately a lot of Israelis are very ready to believe such things right now, and further as soon as one video appears to "prove" the use of human shields, it becomes taken for granted that such things must be general Hamas policy and not isolated actions.

At the same time, it is true that Hamas fighters regularly fight from and use homes, schools and other civilian buildings. I don't know if they have much choice, given the nature of Gaza, but I think this ought at least to be taken into account. I find it a little disturbing that some seem so eager to ascribe to Israel some kind of sinister desire to maximize civilian casualties; if such a desire truly existed the death toll would be much higher.

"Hamas using children as human shields."

This kind of claim has to be made, constantly, in order to work around the gut-level dissonance of this stuff -- the fact that Israel responds to actions that might harm or kill a handful of Israeli civilians (like rocket attacks) with actions that routinely, "collaterally," harm or kill many, many times that number of Palestinian civilians. The only way to mentally defer a sense of responsibility or blame for that fact is to say that it wouldn't have to be that way if only the enemy acted differently. And in some cases this might not even be a bad argument! But so many of the repetitions of it seem to have something else at stake, like it's this ritual truism that's necessary to absolve other stuff you know to be true.

Israeli propaganda = "stop hitting yourself", basically

Exactly -- "you leave us no choice but to do something that of course we do have a choice about, choices we should probably consider given that the old reactions aren't really getting us anywhere."

This kinda goes back to the arguments upthread claiming that some of us put more responsibility on Israel, or excuse the Palestinians from responsibility just on the basis that it's a fractious group. A lot of the Israeli stance on this involves the country putting itself in that position of responsibility, positing itself as this entity that must react certain ways, and therefore You Are Bringing This Reaction on Yourself -- but this is only vaguely politically true inside Israel, not some kind of unchangeable fact of life.

(We talked upthread about the problems of parent/child metaphors, but from the very definition of an occupation onward, there are a lot of Israeli positions here that seize that kind of dynamic in and of themselves.)

imo that argument got shifted a bit with the democratic election of Hamas.

plus longer range missiles from Iran being able to reach Dimona .

This kind of claim has to be made, constantly, in order to work around the gut-level dissonance of this stuff -- the fact that Israel responds to actions that might harm or kill a handful of Israeli civilians (like rocket attacks) with actions that routinely, "collaterally," harm or kill many, many times that number of Palestinian civilians. The only way to mentally defer a sense of responsibility or blame for that fact is to say that it wouldn't have to be that way if only the enemy acted differently. And in some cases this might not even be a bad argument! But so many of the repetitions of it seem to have something else at stake, like it's this ritual truism that's necessary to absolve other stuff you know to be true.

― nabisco, Wednesday, January 7, 2009 7:53 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is unbelievably evasive bs imo, kind of ma-level critical theory. i mean fortunately one loses the patronizing italics in my quoted version.

I wasn't gonna put it so harshly as that, but I don't think the dissonance nabisco describes here is in any way unique to the Israeli situation. It's called going to war with a relatively weak enemy. I can't imagine any modern military power reacting any differently to the present situation, or handling the long-term back and forth any better. And, yeah, maybe that means I need to demand a lot more of my modern military powers, but that's a much bigger issue than what goes on in Gaza.

xpost - Please explain how that's remotely bullshit, or remotely evasive.

I don't think it should be remotely controversial to point out that (a) the average Israeli knows IDF actions affect and kill Palestinian civilians, (b) the average Israeli is a human being who is going to consider this somewhat unfortunate, and thus (c) arguments are going to be made and repeated that there was No Other Choice, that it's not what was desired, that it's what Palestinian militants forced the nation to have to do to defend itself -- this is not a complicated or controversial idea.