Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

that'll teach 'em to vote for Hamas amirite

senseless

TEL AVIV — After nine days of aerial assaults on Gaza that have killed more than 200 people, Israel announced late Wednesday that it would suspend the attacks for five hours on Thursday as a humanitarian gesture at the request of the United Nations. But a senior Israeli military official said that the likelihood of a ground invasion to eliminate militants’ rockets launched from Gaza was “very high.”

to bibi's credit he is probably the most reserved israeli PM in my memory about deploying ground forces

in 2009 olmert sent in ground troops on the second day (and had more casualties in the first day from the aerial bombing than bibi has had this entire duration of the conflict)

What's your response to the killing of the four children Mordy? They were playing hide and seek on the beach. Not a suspect area by any means, not a Hamas place. Is that still part of the "appropriate response"?

oh look Israel made a gesture towards the UN how cute

i'm not an official spokesperson for the IDF, LBI. you don't need to question my opinion on every civilian casualty in gaza.

as a general quote for any question you might ever have on a related note: "i feel sad about the death of all innocent civilians in every conflict throughout the world"

I didn't approach you as "an official spokesperson for IDF". I also am not questioning your opinion "on every civilian casualty". Nice you have a pull quote at hand though, expressing you "feel sad about innocent civilians in every conflict throughout the world". Classy.

The death of these four kids is not "sad". It is sickening. They aren't collateral damage in a "conflict", they were deliberately murdered. Israel's army is fortunate enough to have the means to be able to aim properly. They abused this 'privilege' yet again. But you simply can't bring yourself to acknowledge that this is a criminal atrocity.

You want Hamas to stop sending rockets to Israel. I want that too. But in return Israel needs to stop it's apartheid and occupation policy. There is no other way.

they are collateral damage in a conflict.

GAZA CITY — It is not unusual for militants to launch rockets from sites near my hotel. Israeli missiles and shells have also landed pretty close to al-Deira, an old red stucco inn with a large terrace overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Just a few hundred yards down the beach is the fishing harbor.

like when you say "deliberately murdered" do you actually believe that the IDF targeted these kids for some reason? why? obv every civilian casualty damages israel's international reputation and damages the IDF's ability to operate in gaza. what would they have to gain from deliberately targeting children? sadistic glee? is that really what you believe?

personally, I reject the entire concept of collateral damage. it's entire formulation is intended as a moral sleight-of-hand to absolve the actions of a military. but war means innocents get murdered. that's what it is, that's what it has always meant, that has always been a part of it. if you participate in a war, that is what you are signing up for.

xp

the pics are v clear about 4 kids playing around on a sea wall; if journos could them clearly it i don't know what the unit who shot them was looking at.

that one kid was shaped like a rocket

in the social mediasphere, the amount of vicious antisemitism these operations bring out is pretty shocking

the amount of eliminationist racism coming from israel supporters doubly so, frankly. all you have to see is a mention of events like the beach shelling to see a stream of what follows: the kettle logic that it didn't really happen like that, that the kids deserved it, that hamas made it all happen, that they'd grow up to be jihadis anyway, and on and on

win/win

social media re I/P is odious and unavoidable.

like when you say "deliberately murdered" do you actually believe that the IDF targeted these kids for some reason? why? obv every civilian casualty damages israel's international reputation and damages the IDF's ability to operate in gaza. what would they have to gain from deliberately targeting children? sadistic glee? is that really what you believe?

― Mordy, Thursday, July 17, 2014 12:03 AM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

After having learned about the ins and outs today, that is what I believe. That beach wasn't a known Hamas hotspot. No rockets have been fired to Israel from that place (because it is just a beach, there is nothing there). Israel had the spot in clear vision. They didn't strike once but repeatedly. Targeting that spot of the beach, on those kids. There really is no other way to interpret it as it being deliberate. I don't know why, I refuse to believe it is because "sadistic glee". But this is what happened,

Social media on this: to be avoided at all cost.

yeah, it's really hard for me to interpret what looks like the "deliberate" killing of four kids according to journos, using superior american-backed drone technology as "civilian casualties" (or to look at this as a "conflict", which imo is a word loaded with the assumption of even-somewhat-equal warfare -- israel shelling a tiny strip of land for essentially throwing oversized rocks at them is not close). that's either murder -- unlikely, i agree -- or just straight up manslaughter based on human/technological error that decided four kids playing on a beach were hamas operatives.

and as someone with a lot of exposure to the Free Palestine side of reactive social media as well as a jew oversensitive to antisemitism, i can't say i've spotted a single example of anything that smells like antisemitism. nothing that has criticized israel or its citizens on the basis of judaism rather than as a nation. maybe you've been around some different people.

10000 sq miles vs 140 sq miles

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/07/16/371556/israel-must-kill-all-palestinian-mothers/

israeli MP calling for genocide

Israeli explanation in NY Times article

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/world/middleeast/gaza-strip-beach-explosion-kills-children.html?_r=0

Alon Ben-David, a well-sourced Israeli military affairs analyst, said on Israeli television that the first beach blast targeted a structure that Israel believed was used by Hamas. He said the second blast might have been aimed at the running children, perhaps mistaken for militants. He added that given the military’s technologically advanced surveillance equipment, “it is a little hard for me to understand this, because the images show that the figures are children.”

I wonder how this split between the non-Israeli Jewish diaspora, which is increasingly anti-Israel, and Israeli Jews, who are increasingly militant/racist/insane will play out in the generations to come. I was reading some Malzberg essay (from the 90s) recently where he expressed how profoundly insulting and ahistorical it is for Israel to claim centrality in Jewish identity, when for so long - for centuries - it was the Jewish diaspora that was the center and lifeblood of Jewish culture. Now all of a sudden because you live there you are the most Jewish and other Jews should feel obligated to stand in solidarity with you? Younger Jews, particularly in America, are totally alienated from Israel; this seems like a major schism, with no real precedent afaik. Certainly reflects how I feel.

xp

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/07/16/371556/israel-must-kill-all-palestinian-mothers/

israeli MP calling for genocide
--j.

They should put all the palestinians in concentration camps amirite

@ggreenwald
"Boys Drawn to Gaza Beach, and Into Center of Mideast Strife" = NYT-ese for: Israel bombs 4 boys playing on a beach

Jeff A. Taylor @TheFree_Lance
"At Dealey Plaza, JFK Finds Self At Center of Foreign Policy Debate" #NYTHistory

They should put all the palestinians in concentration camps amirite

― panettone for the painfully alone (mayor jingleberries), Thursday, July 17, 2014 3:58 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

mm perhaps they could avoid the stigma of camps by simply surrounding a demarcated region with military checkpoints

/!\ alert /!\ ^^^^^^^^^ this is not me drawing an equivalency it is a grim joke /!\ alert /!\

this has been your knock on the floor post

can we please not do this bullshit on this thread?

But my argument is not with the Palestinians or even with Hamas. People in the thick of it pursue their own agenda as best they can. But what’s our agenda? What do we, in the cosy safety of tolerant old England, think we are doing when we call the Israelis Nazis and liken Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto? Do those who blithely make these comparisons know anything whereof they speak?

In the early 1940s some 100,000 Jews and Romanis died of engineered starvation and disease in the Warsaw Ghetto, another quarter of a million were transported to the death camps, and when the Ghetto rose up it was liquidated, the last 50,000 residents being either shot on the spot or sent to be murdered more hygienically in Treblinka. Don’t mistake me: every Palestinian killed in Gaza is a Palestinian too many, but there is not the remotest similarity, either in intention or in deed – even in the most grossly mis-reported deed – between Gaza and Warsaw.

Given the number of besieged and battered cities there have been in however many thousands of years of pitiless warfare there is only one explanation for this invocation of Warsaw before any of those – it is to wound Jews in their recent and most anguished history and to punish them with their own grief. Its aim is a sort of retrospective retribution, cancelling out all debts of guilt and sorrow. It is as though, by a reversal of the usual laws of cause and effect, Jewish actions of today prove that Jews had it coming to them yesterday.

Berating Jews with their own history, disinheriting them of pity, as though pity is negotiable or has a sell-by date, is the latest species of Holocaust denial, infinitely more subtle than the David Irving version with its clunking body counts and quibbles over gas-chamber capability and chimney sizes. Instead of saying the Holocaust didn’t happen, the modern sophisticated denier accepts the event in all its terrible enormity, only to accuse the Jews of trying to profit from it, either in the form of moral blackmail or downright territorial theft. According to this thinking, the Jews have betrayed the Holocaust and become unworthy of it, the true heirs to their suffering being the Palestinians. Thus, here and there throughout the world this year, Holocaust day was temporarily annulled or boycotted on account of Gaza, dead Jews being found guilty of the sins of live ones.

-howard jacobson in 2009: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-letrsquos-see-the-criticism-of-israel-for-what-it-really-is-1624827.html

For the record and as I told Mordy privately, I regretted that post right away and apologize for it.

I wonder how this split between the non-Israeli Jewish diaspora, which is increasingly anti-Israel, and Israeli Jews, who are increasingly militant/racist/insane will play out in the generations to come.

The word "increasingly" is doing a lot of work here. I think it's broadly true that insane militancy is getting stronger in Israel, but still think it's not very strong. And I think it's broadly true that anti-Israel and anti-Zionist feelings are increasing among American Jews, but also think that American Jews, including young American Jews, generally see themselves as pro-Israel and Zionist. If Israeli politics 20 years from now is dominated by people like Ayelet Shaked, that could change. But that's not Israel now. Israel is represented by Ayelet Shaked about as well as the United States is represented by Michele Bachmann.

There really is no other way to interpret it as it being deliberate. I don't know why, I refuse to believe it is because "sadistic glee". But this is what happened.

There really are lots of other ways to interpret it. Do you think Russians shot down a Malaysian passenger plane with 300 people aboard because they want to kill Malaysians? I don't, and it's not because I'm a Vladimir Putin apologist.

No, the way it looks now, is that separatists shot it down *thinking* it was a Ukranian cargo plane. They messed up. But your comparison is flawed on so many levels.

the neofascist right in israel looks a lot like its european counterparts. same tshirts anyway...

http://www.talschneider.com/2014/07/14/goodnightleftside-2/

but also think that American Jews, including young American Jews, generally see themselves as pro-Israel and Zionist

some interesting stats here

Older Jews are more likely than younger Jews to see caring about Israel as an essential part of what being Jewish means to them. More than half of Jews 65 and older say caring about Israel is essential for their Jewish identity (53%), as do 47% of Jews ages 50-64. By comparison, 38% of Jews in their 30s and 40s and 32% of Jewish adults under age 30 say caring about Israel is central to what being Jewish means to them. It is hard to know whether these age differences suggest that U.S. Jews’ attachment to Israel will weaken over time. If younger Jews retain their lower levels of attachment to Israel, then overall attachment to Israel may weaken with time.

and then there's this:http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=326

Indeed, a mounting body of evidence
has pointed to a growing distancing from Israel of American Jews, and the distancing seems
to be most pronounced among younger Jews.
Insofar as younger Jews are less attached to
Israel, the inevitable replacement of the older
population with younger birth cohorts leads
to a growing distancing in the population
overall.
In recent years, several studies have
pointed to the distancing phenomenon, be
they studies focusing on attitudes toward Is
rael specifically (e.g., Cohen 2002; Luntz), or
those painting a more generalized portrait of
Jewish identity among younger adult American Jews (e.g., Cohen and Kelman 2007;
Greenberg 2004, 2006; Ukeles et al. 2006).
Studies pointing to an attenuated American
Jewish relationship with Israel are not a recent phenomenon; in fact, they stretch back
nearly a quarter of a century. With such titles
as, “Are American and Israeli Jews Drifting
Apart?” (Cohen 1989b), “Ties and Tensions”
(Cohen 1987), or “From Romantic Idealists
to Loving Realists: The Changing Place of
Israel in the Consciousness of American
Jews” (Cohen 1985), a long trail of literature
documents diminished attachment to Israel
among American Jews (see in addition,
Cohen 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989a, 1989c, 1990,
1991a, 1991b, 1992, 1996; Cohen and Liebman
2000; Cohen and Lipset 1991; Liebman and
Cohen 1990; Waxman 1992).

urgh sorry for spacing

IDF talking it up a notch http://htz.li/Wd74M0

Taking, not talking

here we goooooo

Declaring a new phase in its operation, Israel’s military said it was entering the coastal strip to wipe out Hamas’s rocket capabilities and to dismantle what is believed to be an extensive network of tunnels used by the militants to infiltrate Israel.

W. Post

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/middleeast/israelis-watch-bombs-drop-on-gaza-from-front-row-seats.html?_r=1

"atmosphere of fear in Israel"

well Charles Krauthammer has confirmed that Israel's doing the correct and moral thing by invading, we can all sleep well tonight!

what would they have to gain from deliberately targeting children? sadistic glee? is that really what you believe?

― Mordy, Wednesday, July 16, 2014 5:03 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sadistic glee:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/dorsey/israeli-crowd-cheers-as-missile-hits-gaza-live-on-cnn

Exactly.

Meanwhile, Bill Maher manages to defend slaughter and domestic violence in 140 characters:

http://i.imgur.com/WPotumg.jpg

Operation Protective Edge

i've been thinking for like 5 minutes but i literally do not have words for that besides fuck bill maher

Has been and always will be a horrible person

christ Maher's smug mug. enough of him.

I am a big Zionist and screw Bill Maher and screw people in Sderot who treat a war like a Transformers movie and screw anybody who thinks that being a Zionist means you're psyched about innocent people getting killed.