the USA, Israel, and national interest

It does seem like something of a stretch, yes.

btw contederizer good call on not reading past the first sentence, ugh

Or if you prefer, a NYT op-ed: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/opinion/08khalidi.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=RASHID%20KHALIDI&st=cse

One can take a stand against what Israel is currently doing without presenting an absurdly distorted, one-sided and simplistic view of Israeli-Palestinian history. Thank you for random op-ed piece, tho.

considering the nature of war, i would assume that horrible incident was a mistake of some sort, which happen all the time in war. and the consequences of which are usually pretty dire.

the school bombing was an inside job

we decided that this resolution, the text of which we support, the goals of which we support, and the objectives that we fully support, should indeed be allowed to go forward. I believe in doing so, the Council has provided a roadmap for a sustainable, durable peace in Gaza.

Sounds like a vote FOR, wouldn't you think? Wrong. USA abstains.

Was it an error because they thought the fire was coming from the building when it actually wasn't?

Judging by the word "unintentional" in there, the claim's that they admitted two things: (a) they had no good official reason to shell the building, and therefore, by extension, (b) oops, our bad. (This is odd to me, as a shocking admission -- we could probably all agree that the IDF must regularly destroy things it didn't explicitly mean to, right? -- but I guess it is something of an event to get anything other than a defense that it was a justified and necessary part of a routine action and therefore not in error, etc.)

considering the nature of war, i would assume that horrible incident was a mistake of some sort, which happen all the time in war.

I don't mean this too critically, and this is just going back to my earlier thing about abdicating responsibility, but I always worry when we come close to blaming things on "war." You know, intangibles don't kill, Ares doesn't kill.

Hey Gavin, did you actually read any of the thread?

This is odd to me, as a shocking admission -- we could probably all agree that the IDF must regularly destroy things it didn't explicitly mean to, right? -- but I guess it is something of an event to get anything other than a defense that it was a justified and necessary part of a routine action and therefore not in error, etc.

― nabisco

This is true, thought it's a pleasant shock - or as pleasant a shock as possible, under the circumstances. I was "shocked" in this manner by the US military during the 2nd Iraq war, too. Admission of misdeeds absent extraordinary outside pressure. Leads one to believe that the militaries of even the most belligerent nations might be managed by, you know, people.

"Occasionally shocked," that is. Very occasionally.

well i'm not trying to suggest that this mistake allows israel to abdicate responsibility but rather that i seriously doubt that this was malicious, cf. "moving innocents to other location, subsequently bombing said location intentionally".

Yeah, it was a perfectly reasonable comment. I think I just have a hair trigger lately for "well this is what was is" as a sentiment, and had to mention it.

Yeah, it is a ridiculous argument. "This is what a war is" = maybe you ought to have considered that when you started a war.

Ok, one thing that is really starting to piss me off right now is law school classmates posting their Birthright Israel trip photos to Facebook. Hey look, it's my fat, never-known-suffering ass riding a camel!

the accounts of this are going to keep getting uglier:

Only on Wednesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement on Thursday, did Israel give Red Cross representatives permission to enter Zeitoun, and what the operatives found there chilled them. Four small children in the Samouni household, so weak they could not stand unassisted, cowered next to the corpses of slain mothers, the Red Cross said on Thursday. At least 12 corpses lay on mattresses and three more bodies were found in another house.

Surviving family members said they were sure more people remained buried under the rubble without food or water, and were in danger of dying. Members of B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, told the Washington Post that soldiers with the Israeli Defense Forces were in the neighborhood and aware of the citizens’ misery.

“What these family members say consistently is that the I.D.F. was close by,” said a spokeswoman for the group. “This wasn’t some remote area.”

i mean ...

hurting i say this from the heart your jew self-hatred is a source of inspiration and lolz for me in these cold winter months

Wait, and what. If I show an obvious distaste for certain cretinous or obstreperous white Americans does that mean I am a self-hating white American? Give it to me straight. I can handle the truth.

It's ok man.

So nobody's going on any demos?

http://bamalamarecords.com/demos.jpg

My parents went to a pro-Israel demo this week.

the 11am trafalgar sq tomorrow demo seems to have a reasonable message, but i'm fuckwed if i'm gonna spend time among the 'we are all hamas' crowd.

what crowd is that? the one on today's 12:30 London demo?

we are all galloway now

it's being organized by the swp, so yeah, probably; last week's certainly did. (there are plenty of decent people going on the demo too, naturally.)

did pinefox go? perhaps he could liveblog like this guy:

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/01/arrived.html

"There's no way they were prepared for the scale of this.
There's an atmosphere of barely contained chaos."

he's not too good with technology, perhaps if you could liveblog from a sliderule

OMG! Hamas completely surrenders!

Just got here and the gathering crowds are massive. It is also rowdy
as hell

yeah so pro-suicide bomber hamas dude azzam tamimi spoke, which must've been edgy.

loving the media lens message board and all the idiot students mailing challenging essays to jeremy bowen and expecting heated debate when all they get is like

hi,

i covered this in my report yesterday.

jeremy bowen

SEE HOW HE IS A STOOGE OF THE CORPORATE ZIONIST MEDIA!!!!!!!!!!

Yes I did go to the demonstration and on the march. It was said that 100,000 people attended; maybe it was fewer, I don't know; certainly 10s of 1000s.

I don't know as much about the issue as others; it is not one with which I have ever been very familiar; but my sense is that the cause promoted today - protest against Israel's attacks on Palestinians and its starvation and disabling of their society - is just. As far as I can gather, Palestinian conditions are desperate, and are presumably getting more desperate year after year. I think that people are right to protest about this.

Pinefox OTM. It's too bad that there doesn't seem to be rhetorical space available for broad numbers of people to rally around that point alone, without too many inferences or distractions surrounding it.

inferences or distractions like being familiar with the issue you are marching on??

i don't mind pinefox being faux-naive generally, ok i do quite often, but here it's a bit have-your-cake-and-eat-it.

- "inferences" like the widespread assumption that having concern for the poverty, lack of security, statelessness, and refugee-style conditions of Palestine somehow goes hand in hand with being insufficiently friendly toward Israel or condoning terrorism

- "distractions" like rabbit-hole arguments about bad guys and tactics and politics that immediately vex things and steer people away from simple and (in my opinion) shouldn't-be-controversial statement that the conditions Palestinians are in are sad, unfortunate, and should not be morally tolerable to any of us over the long term

If being "knowledgeable" about the topic is a way of suddenly disappearing the fact that the conditions of Palestine are just plain flat-out Not A Good Thing, then perhaps some "faux" naivete is entirely in order, you know?

I have no doubt that someone will kinda prove my point by responding to that with "well what about the conditions of Israelis" or "well that's not Israel's fault" or any number of other things that are kinda separate from the basic point that the position/conditions of a Palestinian born right this second are sort of untenable and unconscionable.

It goes a BIT further than that, nabisco; I wasn't at the protest today in London but I believe its main purpose was to say that the current Israeli attacks on Gaza are wrong - not just that the "conditions" of Palestinians are reprehensible, especially in Gaza (which they obviously are). I agree that the current bombing of Gaza is wrong and I'm glad the pinefox, and the tens of thousands of others were there.

thats hella retarded. have fun on yr gayass march that has no point or perspective to offer except "like, not cool" that will really help with this morally untenable situation

I was gonna xpost something there but I've deleted it because what's the point; this Lamp post is appalling to me, but whatever

http://www.hurryupharry.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/img_4121-300x225.jpg
http://www.hurryupharry.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/img_4166-300x225.jpg
http://www.hurryupharry.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/nazi3-300x225.jpg

Thank god these guys are here to help.

Unlike Nabisco, who merely made his dismay and disapproval public and unmistakeable, but who has not rolled up his sleeves and done anything really useful Lamp has just entered into tense direct negotiations with the Israeli government aimed at alleviating this morally untenable situation. A joint declaration is expected soon.

Does anybody have any photos of gay asses to post?

If being "knowledgeable" about the topic is a way of suddenly disappearing the fact that the conditions of Palestine are just plain flat-out Not A Good Thing, then perhaps some "faux" naivete is entirely in order, you know?

I think this misses the point. I don't think anyone here (myself included) thinks the Palestinian situation is a "good" one. But all these things that you think distract from the clear truth aren't just distractions. A lot of them are really important issues that have a lot to do with the why. Obscuring the "why" doesn't give any insight or help to the Palestinians. It might make us feel morally righteous (WE WON'T STAND FOR THIS) but the truth is that any progress requires these "distractions." We need to know the history of the crisis, the current facts on the ground, the possible negotiations that could move things forward. I think one of the reasons left-wing protests of Israel aren't particularly successful is because they ignore all these things. I've seen it various times on this thread - that youtube video isn't actually Israeli's attacking Gaza, but who cares? Or 'who knows whether Hamas uses children as human shields or not?' As though these are just side points and it doesn't really matter what reality is. This is not unlike Americans who felt bad for the Georgians during the war last year - they don't actually know what South Ossetia is, or who lives there, or why Russia invaded Georgia. But they know it's really sad for the Georgians and they're in a bad situation and so BOO RUSSIA, RUSSIA SUCKS. But you kinda have to know something to get something done.

(And I'm not saying you have to be pro-Israel to been aware of the situation. But that some subtlety is required. Faux-naivety is pretty bullshit IMHO.)

Mordy, nabisco didn't say those things were distractions. He actually said something quite different. It's weird how you completely ignore what he says, and just argue against what suits you.

Although maybe he will come along and actually try to argue that we don't need to "know the history of the crisis"! Or that we don't need to know "the current facts on the ground" - or "the possible negotiations that could move things forward". But you know, I doubt it.

Israel may be able to ignore demonstrations in London with consummate ease, but that is not quite the point. The British government may take some notice of them in formning their own position, and the British position may present the Israeli government with a factor worth noticing. This same dynamic, the more it plays out in Europe, will have a cumulative effect. Israel exports a lot of stuff to Europe.

And it is better than doing nothing, imo. Sometimes you need to make a choice and take a stand, even if the details are murky and complex. (Somehow I doubt that one of the possible outcomes is Israel disappearing or suffering genocidal warfare.)

i agree w/ mordy and don't get nabisco's post. no-one protests about the unconscionable conditions in, ooh, i dunno, zimbabwe; this *is* about what's happening now and thus those ugly distractions creep in.

No Aimless you got to understand - the Palestinians are on the freaking VERGE of destroying Israeli society forever. Or do I have that the wrong way round. Well whatever.