Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

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.

it's different bc israel destroyed 5 years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars sunk into tunnels in a few weeks

Young Palestinians in Gaza will blame Israel and not Hamas for their woes. The analysis is "sharp" only if you want to read a description of damage inflicted to Hamas' leadership, with no mention of the collateral issues and deaths, and the fact that Hamas continues to maintain rockets (no matter how ineffective) and that there will be Egypt-brokered negotiations regarding getting the blockade lifted.

at least the other times hamas did get egypt to loosen border control iirc. this time not even that.

young palestinians will continue to blame israel. that's also not a new accomplishment.

they've destroyed the egypt tunnels before, they were rebuild. they could be as well this time, but hopefully israel will get on the fucking case and get the anti-tunnel equipment which apparantly already exists and would have meant they could have stopped them from the israeli side without killing 1500 palestinians.

the lack of funds is a great problem - thankfully - but it was there before. it's not an outcome of the war, so how can it be a win?

like if you fought a war, and the biggest thing you achieved is you made palestinian youth in gaza hate israel, you have accomplished literally nothing

the shift is that israel has definitely thrown it's lot with the reactionary dictatorships in the region. so now we can stop with the 'only democrazy' crap.

oh, and hopefully the bds-movement will move to the mainstream in eu, and hopefully shed the anti-semites on the way.

not even. ppl who like israel will continue to like it and call it 'only democracy,' ppl who don't like israel didn't buy the 'only democracy' thing to begin with. there is no PR war to be won imho. it's a distraction.

yeah, i can tell you there has been a change in denmark.

if anything i think this war did more damage to bds than help - since the bds actually does need the PR, and the PR for pro-palestinian demonstrations were really bad

maybe in denmark, idk

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-time-for-netanyahu-to-make-peace-in-gaza/2014/08/04/b3662c9e-1bec-11e4-ab7b-696c295ddfd1_story.html?hpid=z3

Columnist Ignatius is often too neo-con for me, but this is interesting

The question is whether Netanyahu has the courage and political clout to move in the same direction, toward a new framework for Gaza, rather than return to the battered status quo ante — with continued Hamas rule and the recurring wars that some Israelis have described as “mowing the lawn.”

It will be hard for the Israeli leader to embrace this new vision for Gaza because he would have to reverse his earlier opposition to the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement, which he denounced as an embrace by Abbas of Hamas’s terrorist ideology. Netanyahu would also have to be prepared to truly open Gaza to the free flow of people and goods in return for disarming the terrorist groups.

When you lose Denmark ...

also, where do you get the idea that pro-palestinian demos were particularly bad? in france, they are considering outlawing the Jewish Defence League at this point, due to their behaviour recently.

it was my impression based on the news i saw about the protests and the media i read about them. i could be wrong. in any case, my broader point is that we get caught up in the PR battle and sometimes ignore the more realpolitik battle. i'm not sure that israel is more politically alienated in 2014 than it was in 67 - if anything egypt and saudi arabia backed israel more this war than they ever have in the past. that's a huge political victory. maybe the mondoweiss narrative is right and the popular groundswell against israel is building to a fever pitch - but i'm going to bet that israel's relationships w/ its closest arab neighbors are probably a better indication than protests that have broken out during every war israel has ever been in. are there numbers that indicate that these were bigger protests than the ones during cast lead, or second intifada?

also, where do you get the idea that pro-palestinian demos were particularly bad? in france, they are considering outlawing the Jewish Defence League at this point, due to their behaviour recently.

― Frederik B, Tuesday, August 5, 2014 12:31 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh I don't know, maybe it was the chants of "Gas the Jews", but of course that's only because of the JDL's provocation right?

no, i don't know the amount of protesters in the street. but i do know the public debate has changed, and the jewish host of the main late night debate program on public television has been called out over his biased discussions (I managed to get through thirty seconds one night, it went something like: 'Mads Gilbert is a doctor working in gaza, who has been reporting on what he has seen and experienced. But does his work help Hamas?' Then I turned it off. Apparantly they got into a shouting match thereafter.)

And I do realize realpolitik is more important, but I've hopefully made my thoughts clear on the shameful alliance israel has gotten itself into with the dictatorial regimes of it's neighborhood states. I really don't think that will do any good in the long run. But do you think that Sisi's foreign policy says anything about the views of the people of Egypt?

well, yeah, it was my impression that the ppl of egypt had something to do w/ the MB getting tossed out - didn't they broadly support the army's coup?