the USA, Israel, and national interest

(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.

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.

Part that might be hard to prop up w/ evidentiary support.

Not that I thought it was particularly patronizing in the first place.

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

evasive:

- does hamas use children as human shields?
- what's *really* at stake here?

or

- does hamas use children as human shields?
- the rockets only kill a few people

i mean, is it a 'ritual truism', or might it have some truth-content? it wouldn't necessarily 'absolve' israel, because in a place as densely packed as gaza there would be substantial collateral damage anyway, but the question is pertinent. as are other questions, like, what does israel think will be the outcome of this, etc, etc: it's still a legit question that can't be wafted away with a bit of discource analysis.

xpost -

It's an observation, not a lawsuit! Look, this just strikes me as flat-out mechanically true: what great practical reason is there to make strong claims that Hamas uses children as shields, except to explain why it is that you wound up killing children when you attacked Hamas? Which is sometimes a perfectly reasonable explanation! But it can become a claim that you have a stake in that goes well beyond dispassionate truth -- it can become a general claim that other people's actions are responsible for Bad Results you don't want responsibility for. It can become a larger stance, true at times and maybe not at others, that's somewhat similar to saying "I am just punching the air right here, and if you put your head in that space, it's not my fault I hit you."

xpost - ok, so by "evasive" you mean "you are talking about something other than what I feel like talking about" -- congratulations

Especially funny since I was not responding to anything you said, or remotely attempting to waft anything away

no, you were evading the question that your post started with: "Hamas using children as human shields"

of the two possible options talk about it or don't talk about it, you chose 'it's not real question, its symptomatic of something', etc.

That's not a question, that's a claim someone was making, and I was interested in some of the ways such claims operate.

I am not investigating whether or how often Hamas uses children as human shields because I am sitting at a desk in Manhattan, and have no expertise with which to affirm or deny the claim. If you want to evaluate the truth of the claim, feel free to work around my posts.

Meanwhile, I might make an observation about something else, which is not bullshitting, it's a thought/observation.

I did not say it wasn't a real question.

ugh ok, not a question but a claim.

if you do get interested in the truth of claims rather than 'how they operate', this dude seems to be talking from 1st-hand-knowledge in re human shields:

http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/the_worlds_pornographic_intere.php

Eh, whatever, please get interested in biting me

no, feel free to go about manhattan with your head up your arse.

the Israeli army (and I say this from personal experience) can be a big, rough bulldozer

unfortunate choice of words

it would be difficult to go around anywhere with a head up an arse

goldberg owes us his definition of pornography, because his must be pretty fucked up.

When you barely have a military and a completely non-functional infrastructure and society, human shields are kind of all you have left. It's galling to think that Hamas is being taken to task for the last resort of the totally defenseless.

It's galling to think that Hamas is being taken to task for the last resort of the totally defenseless.

This is a pretty compelling argument not to declare that you're going to end the prior cease-fire. The quixotic position, militarily, of Hamas is being shown to be as irresponsible and fuzzy-headed.

When you barely have a military and a completely non-functional infrastructure and society, human shields last resorts are kind of all you have left.

― Tracer Hand

^^ Would be a little easier to swallow. But only a little. Last resorts come in more flavors than "human shield".

When you barely have a military and a completely non-functional infrastructure and society, human shields are kind of all you have left. It's galling to think that Hamas is being taken to task for the last resort of the totally defenseless.

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, January 7, 2009 3:25 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

look i think this assault is disgusting and depressing in the extreme but this statement is just nuts. is a qassam rocket cheaper than someone else's kids?

I mean the Israeli-Palestinian conflict aside, this, as usual is also about Israeli doemstic politics and internecine Palestinian strife (aka Palestinian politics). Did Hamas win the last elections because they're 'push the Zionists to the sea' platform carried them or were people tired of the corruption and arrogance of Fatah? Whichever, they took over Gaza by force and they seem to be seeking some kind of legitimacy and esteem in the manner of Hizbollah, without the weaponry, foreign support or materiel that the latter had. Did they really think they could appeal to their hardcore base by lobbing missles, however fecklessly, into Israel and never see a response? Israel impio is trying to assure southern Israelis that they are being defended and also trying to show Gazans that support for Hamas isn't paying much in the way of dividends.

that said, in jeffrey goldberg's example, arranging bodies for western media seems like a secondary kind of evil to me than creating dead bodies in the first place

xp to myself