Israel to World: "Suck It."

Beinart says Obama dngaf anymore:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/10/why-obama-will-ignore-israel.html

Contrary to reports in the Israeli press, Team Obama didn’t mastermind the angry European response.

huh

idk, i didn't see any such reports

i wonder what he means by "israeli press". i'd assume israel has its own breitbart/nypost/dailymail zone but idk hebrew so i wouldn't be able to get into it.

Time to sell Israel a buncha bombs

http://mobile.defensenews.com/article/312100010

Iran’s air force commander said Tuesday that the distance between Iran and Israel is the maximum range that Tehran requires its missiles fly. Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh made the statement in response to a US intelligence report revealed last week that claimed Tehran is no longer on track to achieve an intercontinental missile by 2015.

“We don’t need missiles with more than a 2,000-kilometer range, even though have the technology to build them,” Hajizadeh told reporters. “Israel is our longest-range target.”

NYT:

Correction: December 7, 2012

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the effect of planned Israeli development in the area known as E1 on access to the cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem from Jerusalem, and on the West Bank. Such development would limit access to Ramallah and Bethlehem to only narrow corridors far from the Old City and downtown Jerusalem. It would also create a large block of Israeli settlements in the center of the West Bank; it would not divide the West Bank in two.

Because of an editing error, the article referred incompletely to the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state. Critics see E1 as a threat to the meaningful contiguity of such a state state because it would leave some Palestinian areas connected to one another by roads with few exits or by circuitous routes; the proposed development would not, technically, make a contiguous Palestinian state impossible.

To be fair, there's only one country that's been talking incessantly about bombing Iran to deter.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/obamas-crystal-clear-promise-to-stop-iran-from-getting-a-nuclear-weapon/262951/ ?

lieberman to resign!

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D1O8enuvvg4/UMtnEnL17uI/AAAAAAAASag/48odqwUoeC4/s1600/pewpoll.png

this guy is running for knesset:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAwSMPhLAKo&feature=youtu.be

haaretz front page:

Palestinian poll: Hamas' Haniyeh would win PA presidency over Abbas

http://forward.com/articles/167832/israel-approves--more-settlement-homes-in-east/

The Head of the Gaza Border Agency, Maher Abu-Sabha, has refused entry to the EU Mission charged with monitoring the border with Egypt at Rafah. The Mission was planning to return to Gaza after an absence of six years.

Speaking to a Palestinian newspaper, Abu-Sabha insisted that the Rafah Crossing is Palestinian and is under absolute Palestinian sovereignty. "There is no need for an EU mission in Rafah," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/18/irans-state-run-news-network-blames-israeli-death-squads-for-sandy-hook-shooting/

if you go to the original and then read the comments you will probably just want to give up on the world

middle east media can be pretty psychotic

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Kv-2hb4JCic/UNMrE_NXaDI/AAAAAAAASzI/LtPki2XNiuM/s1600/The+Jerusalem+Website-101215.png

http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/12/iranian-computers-attacked-by-new-malicious-data-wiper-program/

i am the viper, i've come to vipe your vindows

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/israelis-shoot-nra-claim-article-1.1226401

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/12/24/israeli-pm-aims-to-deport-tens-of-thousands-of-africans/

(...) aims to repatriate tens of thousands of African illegal migrants (...)

http://i.imgur.com/dsTSB.gif

i am the viper, i've come to vipe your vindows

― before and after broscience (goole), Friday, December 21, 2012 5:54 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

knowing is half the battle

http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/General+News/150445/Poll%3A-HaBayit-HaYehudi-Gaining-on-Labor-for-Second-Place.html

:|

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/25/naftali-bennett-wants-you.html

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/a-surprising-process-of-israelization-is-taking-place-among-palestinians-in-east-jerusalem.premium-1.490367

rolling middle east 2013 thread

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israel-admits-ethiopian-women-were-given-birth-control-shots.premium-1.496519

thank God they were not permanently sterilized. what was the rationale, irrational though it may have been?

Well I'm not giving them my money so I can read the article, but just off the top of my head: how about RACISM?

oh it was free for me when I linked it, strange

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gave-birth-control-to-ethiopian-jews-without-their-consent-8468800.html

It's okay, it's in plenty of places online. I'd already seen the headline.

Dan Sieradski writes in comments section in the Forward:

You're all missing the most important part of the story: It's not merely that these women were not given informed consent, it's that Israeli authorities allegedly made their effective sterilization a necessary prerequisite of their emigration.

These women claim they were told by Jewish Agency and Joint Distribution Committee staffers that if they did not take the DP shots, they would not be permitted to emigrate to Israel or that their lives there, once they'd arrived, would be unbearably difficult if they had children.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/why-is-the-birth-rate-in-israel-s-ethiopian-community-declining.premium-1.483494

After I posted the above link to Twitter, calling it "the JDC's eugenics program," I got a call from a JDC spokesman saying that they dispute the women's claims about being intimidated by JDC staffers, but added that if a eugenics program did exist, it was the Israeli government and not the JDC that was responsible for it.

I also sent an email to Dr. Rick Hodes, the JDC official who administered the DP shots in Ethiopia, asking what his reasoning was. His response was that he was making contraception available only at the women's request and that there was no coercion involved whatsoever.
http://d.1ski.me/image/19222v1a1U3L

A representative for the Ethiopian women in Israel making the allegations against the JDC and Jewish Agency said that he is lying, but could provide no evidence apart from the women's testimonies.

It seems pretty obvious that Gamzu issued the letter because there was a claim that it was forced on women, not because he was "admitting" that Israel gave forcible birth control. Obviously if they had instructed Israeli doctors to force (???) the 4-month lasting depo-provera on Ethiopian women for racist reasons that is hideous and gross. I'll wait until a newspaper a little better than the Haaretz breaks the story, though. (Remember when they reported on the front page that England recalled their ambassador last month? Headline quickly changed two days later. They're terrible at breaking news.)

well all they'd have to do is show that they'd been giving Depo-Provera shots to all immigrants no matter of race. But why the fuck would they do that?

"Nobody from inside JDC or the Israeli Ministry of Health, (or anyone else) has ever suggested that we coerce women to use family planning. Women may start, change methods, or stop, at any time. When we offered this as a service, women took advantage of it."

Al-J and Haaretz are pretty much only two media outlets I read re Middle East. Not because I think either are 'fair' towards Israel (neither are) but bc they seem to be the only two actually producing worthwhile first hand journalism.

― Mordy, Tuesday, 27 November 2012

What can I say? They've since started publishing really shitty journalism.

Terrible unsourced stories that don't get covered elsewhere and that they later withdraw. Even this story fails to interview anyone in Israeli government, leads with a headline that isn't backed by the story, etc.

You have to read all journalism critically, but these days Haaretz gets a lot more scrutiny from me than the NYT (or even Al-J non-opinion news).

And I'm sure Israel covers Depo-Provera for all citizens, not just all immigrants, because they have universal healthcare.

Here's some coverage of Gabai's story from when it first broke:
http://blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/167445/shocking-decline-in-ethiopian-israeli-birthrate/

I'm personally skeptical. I don't doubt that some women may have been given it w/out knowing what it was, and wouldn't even be surprised if I found out that individual racist doctors did this, but as a huge conspiracy between independent Jewish refugee groups, immigration groups and the Israeli government? That would be an insane conspiracy for what? A temporary birth-control method?

Alternatively you could explain the population drop by them moving from a third world country with very poor family planning and high poverty to a first world country with universal healthcare. Like the rest of the western world: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/01/world_population_may_actually_start_declining_not_exploding.html

But no, I'm sure that in the midst of the Palestinian demographic boom Israel is definitely conspiring to cut down on the number of African Jews. Man, they're not just Nazis but the worst Nazis ever.

I just can't see any good reason they would be giving this shot to immigrants at all, let alone without consent/informing them what they were taking. Offer it, sure, but make them take it? That makes no sense and is counter-intuitive for a country that invited these thousands of immigrants in the first place, which is why this doesn't quite pass the smell test. But if there's any truth to this that's fucked up.

For the record, Depo itself is pretty harmless (aside from preventing babies, of course). My wife took it for several months, but it promoted unwanted weight gain, iirc.

"no evidence apart from the women's testimonies"