Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

Some rando called my wife a self-hating Jew on the internet. It's not something I hear often though.

Haha omg

Got called an anti-Semite for the first time yesterday, in an awkward pub discussion with friends of friends I didn't know. I can shrug it off, it is too stupid. But my Jewish gf/date (it's undecided) again got called a self-hating Jew, for the umpteenth time. In her face. Only because she will not accept 1600 deaths, that this is not the way forward for anyone, that Israel is only perpetuating the conflict this way. She knows better but it affects her nonetheless. Mostly because people expect her to be 'pro-Israel' by default, because she's Jewish.

xxp

All you can do is let that shit roll off. People are mad right now cuz they feel collectively threatened and on the defensive.

Yeah, you are right. I have had a quick learning experience on how gf is in a double bind though. How everyone expects 'something' from her, or perhaps something more than is on the news or on the internet. Only because she is Jewish. She's got friends and family in Israel she is deeply concerned about, but also condemns the violence Israel deploys, the actions that nation is undertaking. As a result she is getting flack from both ends of the spectrum. Which only shows how hard it is for other people to accept not all (Jewish) people are either Zionist or pro-Hamas.

What really depresses me is the thought - or knowledge - that this has been going on for generations now. Seeds to take the extreme side are firmly planted.

on 'liberal zionists' getting shit from all sides: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/aug/14/liberal-zionists/?insrc=hpma

Yes, that is the conundrum of being a Jew with a familial or emotional connection to Israel who is neither "with us" nor "with the terrorists." Some of the lefty people I follow/am friends with come dangerously close to questioning loyalty. I had a good friend ask me, in context of the question, if I was going to "raise my daughter as an American" -- I understand what he meant given that I'm married to an Israeli but it still hurt to be asked. My daughter IS an American.

in context of the conflict, I mean

I'm raising my children as Earthicans

Yeah that is off limits imho, to ask that Hurting. It also mixes up Israel and being Jewish, throwing that on the same pile.

Thanks for the link Mookie! Will read it tomorrow!

So it seems things got even worse, now.

Per the Guardian:

Meanwhile, the Israel Defence Forces told 70,000 residents of Beit Lahiya that they could return to their homes from 2pm on Saturday, while warning them of possible booby traps laid by Hamas. "The residents are advised to beware of explosive devices Hamas has spread across the area," the IDF said in a statement. "The army has dealt with tunnels and launching pads and has cleaned the area, apart from booby traps," a source said.

"Mr. Netanyahu thanked the United States, which along with the United Nations appeared to support Israel’s position that Hamas’s actions violated the cease-fire, and he asked for international help to rebuild Gaza on the condition of its “demilitarization.” Israel appears to be hoping that with the support of Egypt and the international community, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas can control Gaza through a unity government agreed upon with Hamas and take responsibility for security there and for the Rafah crossing to Egypt.

this is surely best case scenario as far as i can see it - put PA in charge, ease the blockade

Yeah probably

So the kidnapped soldier wasn't kidnapped, but killed in action.

And again:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/03/israel-air-strike-un-school-gaza-rafah

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

Oh good a pro-Israel rally in downtown sf today. Should I bring my dead baby placard

Most Moral Army in the world guys.

shakey maybe dress up as joe buck. i was cracking up at right wingers and other evangelist zionist types praising jon voight yesterday for his incredible bravery standing up to 'notoriously anti-semitic hollywood'.

ha

Update: in addition to a rando calling my wife a self-hating jew, another rando has called her an imperialist racist and a person who should not be working with children. And a family member called her a traitor. Meanwhile, my daughter just randomly shouted "Gaza! Gaza!" in a fro yo shop.

Christ... Chuckles at your daughter though, heh.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/04/world/middleeast/international-scrutiny-after-israeli-barrage-strike-in-jabaliya-where-united-nations-school-shelters-palestinians-in-gaza.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSum&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

An examination of an Israeli barrage that put a line of at least 10 shells through a United Nations school sheltering displaced Palestinians here last week suggests that Israeli troops paid little heed to warnings to safeguard such sites and may have unleashed weapons inappropriate for urban areas despite rising alarm over civilian deaths.

what's the likelihood, as the damage continues to pile on Gaza, that this conflict spreads to the West Bank in a meaningful way? i heard brief mention on an NPR show about a couple of attacks in Jerusalem recently, which would imply at least an attempt to escalate beyond the current borders

Israel has broken my heart: I’m a rabbi in mourning for a Judaism being murdered by Israel

Hasn't escalated in the West Bank in a major way so far...

Meanwhile, ISIS seizes 3 Iraqi towns from Kurds:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/04/world/middleeast/iraq.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimesworld&_r=0&referrer=

The United Nations representative in Baghdad, Nickolay Mladenov, issued a statement on Sunday, citing reports he had that as many as 200,000 civilians, mostly from the minority Yazidi community, had fled the fighting.

“A humanitarian tragedy is unfolding in Sinjar,” Mr. Mladenov said.
...
Yazidis, Kurdish speakers who ascribe to a religion that combines elements of Islam and ancient Persian religions and who are considered apostates by Muslim extremists...

what's the likelihood, as the damage continues to pile on Gaza, that this conflict spreads to the West Bank in a meaningful way? i heard brief mention on an NPR show about a couple of attacks in Jerusalem recently, which would imply at least an attempt to escalate beyond the current borders

― building a desert (art), Monday, August 4, 2014 10:38 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Attacks in Jerusalem by whom? The IDF?

per http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israeli-airstrike-kills-militant-leader-before-unilateral-cease-fire/2014/08/04/7979b66d-e990-4009-8735-19c24e9538c0_story.html

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said an Arab man from East Jerusalem used a backhoe to kill an Israeli pedestrian Monday afternoon, then rammed into a bus and overturned it, injuring three other people. The driver of the backhoe was shot and killed by police, Rosenfeld said.

“We’re looking at this incident as a terrorist attack,” he said.

As the body of the attacker was loaded into an ambulance, Israeli residents of the area cheered and chanted “Death to Arabs” in Hebrew.

Three hours after the attack, a man on a motorbike opened fire at an Israeli soldier waiting at a bus station near the entrance to Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. The soldier was seriously injured and was being treated Monday afternoon at Hadassah Medical Center, Rosenfeld said.

The suspect escaped, and police set up checkpoints at intersections across the city where they stopped and questioned motorbike drivers.

not trying to draw conclusions from this, but it doesn't seem completely out of question to say that eyes are going to be on WB as things continue to deteriorate in Gaza

xp How depressing. The Kurds are Iraq's only post-2003 success story.

http://www.dailydot.com/geek/google-play-store-israel-gaza-bomb-games/

I feel nauseous today -- I want to temporarily unfriend all of my friends who post anything about the conflict but that doesn't seem right somehow.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/honest-voice-israel

Great piece, really gets to the complexity and sometimes disturbing, frustrating imbalance of the debate (as such) on the left. The line between freedom fighters and fascists in this conflict is awfully thin, on both sides.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/the-women-of-isis/375047/

The al-Khansaa Brigade is ISIS’s all-female moral police, established in Raqqa soon after ISIS took over the city a few months ago. "We have established the brigade to raise awareness of our religion among women, and to punish women who do not abide by the law," Abu Ahmad, an ISIS official in Raqqa, told Syria Deeply’s Ahmad al-Bahri. Ahmad emphasized that the brigade has its own facilities to avoid mingling among men and women. “Jihad,” he told al-Bahri, “is not a man-only duty. Women must do their part as well.”

gross mf'ers

the debate (as such) on the left

Let's not do "the left". It's not a monolith and there's plenty of debate.

http://greatmomentsinleftism.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-whole-world-is-watching.html

xpost Hence my "as such." More to the point, I'm not sure there is any debate on "the right."

https://twitter.com/dougmillsnyt/status/496414138415861760

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/08/turkey-tastekin-gaza-palestine-erdogan-hamas-israel-abbas.html

Good luck Israel

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/08/rafah-gaza-war-hospitals-filled-bodies-palestinians.html

Never ask me about peace again
Tears flowed until my body ran dry of them when I received a telephone call on Aug. 3, informing me that my family had been targeted by two F-16 missiles in the city of Rafah. Such was the fate of our family in a war that still continues, with every family in the Gaza Strip receiving its share of sorrow and pain.

Summary⎙ Print A first-hand account of the aftermath of an Israeli strike that killed nine members of the author's family.
Author Asmaa al-GhoulPosted August 4, 2014
Translator(s)Kamal Fayad
My father’s brother, Ismail al-Ghoul, 60, was not a member of Hamas. His wife, Khadra, 62, was not a militant of Hamas. Their sons, Wael, 35, and Mohammed, 32, were not combatants for Hamas. Their daughters, Hanadi, 28, and Asmaa, 22, were not operatives for Hamas, nor were my cousin Wael’s children, Ismail, 11, Malak, 5, and baby Mustafa, only 24 days old, members of Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or Fatah. Yet, they all died in the Israeli shelling that targeted their home at 6:20 a.m. on Sunday morning.

Their house was located in the Yibna neighborhood of the Rafah refugee camp. It was one story with a roof made of thin asbestos that did not require two F-16 missiles to destroy. Would someone please inform Israel that refugee camp houses can be destroyed, and their occupants killed, with only a small bomb, and that it needn’t spend billions to blow them into oblivion?

If it is Hamas that you hate, let me tell you that the people you are killing have nothing to do with Hamas. They are women, children, men and senior citizens whose only concern was for the war to end, so they can return to their lives and daily routines. But let me assure you that you have now created thousands — no, millions — of Hamas loyalists, for we all become Hamas if Hamas, to you, is women, children and innocent families. If Hamas, in your eyes, is ordinary civilians and families, then I am Hamas, they are Hamas and we are all Hamas.

And this is exactly why the operation is a folly.

In reference to the earlier discussed Israeli newspapers. Haaretz is called a 'tiny island of sanity' here:

There is only one major news site that both pro-Israelis and pro-Palestinians read

I subscribed during this conflict, partly to financially support a tiny island of sanity.

this seems sharp too:
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/08/israel-hamas-gaza-defeat-achievements-siege-tunnel-idf.html

lol, no it's not. hamas shut down ben gurion, killed more than fifty israeli soldiers, and got them to leave while they still could shoot rockets. those are wins. what happened to demilitarization and rebuilding? you know, what should have been done five years ago? oh, i guess a constant threat of drone strikes is just as good.

those aren't wins. hamas needs to get the blockade lifted, and the borders opened. not get to continue to fire rockets that don't hit anything at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of infrastructure, tunnels and weapons.

but they've never managed those things before, so how does this make it different than the last times?

and i don't buy this idea about this war radicalizing the gaza, or palestinian population, further than they were (who are all these new gazans who hate israel more than they did since Cast Lead?). maybe hamas will get a momentarily jolt in popularity but they still don't even have the funds to pay their employees and they haven't attained any actual improvements.