Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

Thanks guys, was wondering about this.

Maybe all the militants were not cc'd and they did not know there was a cease fire?

maybe hamas militants took advantage of the cease fire?

Here's some relevant documentation:
http://www.btselem.org/english/Press_Releases/20070625.asp

On the one-year anniversary of the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories , states that he must be released immediately. The organization says that the circumstances of his capture and the behavior of his captors clearly indicate that he is a hostage.

International humanitarian law absolutely prohibits taking and holding a person by force in order to compel the enemy to meet certain demands, while threatening to harm or kill the person if the demands are not met. Furthermore, hostage-taking is considered a war crime and all those involved bear individual criminal liability.

Hamas, which de-facto controls the security apparatus in the Gaza Strip, bears the responsibility to act to release Shalit immediately and unconditionally. Until he is released, those holding him must grant him humane treatment and allow representatives of the ICRC to visit him. The fact that Shalit's right to these visits has been denied constitutes a blatant violation of international law, says B'Tselem.

http://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/Article.xsp?action=openDocument&documentId=B97E89741917B99CC12563CD0051BC50 (Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 34):

The taking of hostages is prohibited.

Yes - kidnapping for ransom is a "war crime" whether it's a soldier or civilian.

― Mordy, Friday, 1 August 2014 12:52 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

1500 Palestinians killed and it takes the possible capture of one Israeli soldier for this guy to talk about war crimes.

I'm just answering a question

Sorry for lashing out Mordy I didn't mean to get personal. I'm reading multiple reports alongside this and getting annoyed with the language and tone of them. Like 35 Palestinians died this morning and the headlines are all about this one guy.

Is kidnapping the same as capturing?
Is abducting the same as detaining?
It seems that Israelis are never captured or detained.

Utilizing the American Lexicon for Modern War clarifies the distinction. since Israel is involved in a "police action" against hamas militants, or "enemy combatants", you can immediately assume that any Israeli soldiers captured were "kidnapped". Additionally this is, anecdotally speaking, a handy vocabulary for avoiding any concerns about potential war crimes because obviously the Geneva convention only applies to conventional armies in standard combat contexts.

they are dealing ith this"one guy" because the two last times Hamas/hezbollah kidnapped a soldier - a war started.

Hamas and Israel knows a kidnapped Israel soldier means power in negotiation. (see Gilad shalit vs. 1000 Terrorists set free)

Israel's goal now is to reduce it to the minimum.

Totally under the impression that a war had already started. My miss.

well, it's gonna get even worse now

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/when-genocide-is-permissible

The truth is, it’s not their fault, falsehood and deceit is part of the very fabric of who they are and that will never change. Still however, despite their propensity to lie, when your enemy tells you that they are bent on your destruction you believe them.

that article is committing genocide on the English language

*vomits*

twitter this morning crowing that 'palestinian defense forces have arrested an enemy combatant'

The genocide post was apparently already "removed by the editors."

Is that where Goole's quote is from?

idk I didn't even get to read it

xp yup

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/military-announce-hospital.html

Fuck this shit.

wow, i read the genocide article in that tiny window of availability, i feel special in gross new ways

i can't tell why that guy has a column? seems like a kid? idk not knowing the israeli media landscape i'm betting he's not a big deal. until now!

http://5tjt.com/when-genocide-is-permissible

from long island, apparently

Yeah there are stands in Forest Hills that have the 5-towns Jewish Times in fact.

Including where my daughter goes to preschool, which makes me queasy all of a sudden.

He is the son of the founder of the 5-Towns paper.

hey who among us hasn't been guilty of nepotistically promoting genocide now and again

I use NBA metaphors in my genocide justifications all the time.

it's a slam dunk

i'm so sure hamas would be disgusted by the idea of genocide

fwiw times of israel is huff post style. columnists don't need approval to post.

That's what I figured, given it was a blog, and that it was quickly removed by editors.

i'm so sure hamas would be disgusted by the idea of genocide

well I thought we were suposed to hold a Great Moral Democracy to a higher standard.

https://twitter.com/HeerJeet/status/495251194554494976

interesting discussion of this pub here

lol @ the guy w Livia Soprano avatar

There is an explanation of Times of Israel here: http://www.vox.com/2014/8/1/5959577/the-times-of-israel-published-an-article-on-when-genocide-is

that dude's an editor at TPM!

xp

http://5tjt.com/editors-note/

times of israel is okay in my experience. i generally don't bother w/ the op-eds (unless it's someone i know - rabbi adin steinsaltz wrote something for them recently that i read. i imagine (though i don't know for sure) that they get most of their "scoops" from independent pro-israel watchdog groups (like MEMRI, CAMERA, etc) which do original reporting. esp useful for scoops that come from translating arab press (MEMRI esp specializes in this). sometimes it's the predictable "this week in antisemitic arabic press" but occasionally there are real stories in there that haven't gotten coverage elsewhere. on the right-wing there's also tablet mag (whose staff is actually very diverse politically - i've worked w/ some of them in the past - but is funded by right wing think tank), and algemeiner journal - which was actually my very first journalism job out of high school (!!) - located in Crown Heights. when i worked for them they were a majority yiddish paper and english news tended to be DC focused. now they have a whole israel section that is very popular on the right today. jpost i read many years ago, but i haven't in quite a while. they've really fallen off. haaretz too (obv not right wing) - though i still visit them everyday. forward is another paper i used to work for, but i don't rate their israel coverage at all (their american jewish coverage is good by contrast). al arabiya in english has been very interesting, this conflict is the first time i seriously started reading them. al-jazeera i haven't been reading as much as this year, ever since they switched to America it seems like the coverage isn't quite as good? idk. in israel tho, none of these are really popular (including haaretz). most popular israeli newspapers are yedioth ahronoth (aka ynet - they have an inferior english website), yisrael hayom (free daily owned by sheldon adelson), and maariv (secular iirc - haven't read it in a few years)

Interesting that Haaretz isn't very popular in Israel. I've the feeling that for media outside of Israel, it's by far the number one go-to and link to Israeli newspaper. Definitely the case over here.

spiegel did a little thing about haaretz a few years ago: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/problems-at-israel-s-haaretz-newspaper-without-a-country-a-599005.html
i imagine if anything it has only gotten worse in the interim.

Thanks for that, will read it later!

Sorry for lashing out Mordy I didn't mean to get personal. I'm reading multiple reports alongside this and getting annoyed with the language and tone of them. Like 35 Palestinians died this morning and the headlines are all about this one guy.

― a curious shade of pale (onimo), Friday, August 1, 2014 12:34 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

reminds me of this article I read in the LAtimes a couple days ago about the tunnels.

OMG TUNNELS SO SCARY POOR ISRAEL

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-israel-tunnels-20140731-story.html#navtype=outfit

I definitely wouldn't be scared if Hamas built tunnels that reached my daughter's school.

they don't seem to have accomplished much with these tunnels

I mean apart from whatever stuff they've been smuggling *into* Gaza

from what i understand they use the Egypt tunnels to smuggle stuff into Gaza. they were saving the israel tunnels for a good opportunity (rumors i've read was rosh hashana this year, though i don't think that's been verified or anything)

BREAKING: Obama calls for unconditional release of Israeli soldier if Hamas wants to resolve conflict.

Because one captured soldier is worth so much more than 1400 dead civilians, right?

it is to the people who have more planes and bombs