Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

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?

like i'm sure the egyptian ppl are very sympathetic to the palestinian ppl, but they probably are also very distrustful of hamas and radical islam

They weren't that distrustful of it when they democratically voted for the Muslim Brotherhood in democratic elections, but that was a coup go

.. ago

I think 'broadly' is misleading. The country is divided. But the coup and following crackdown was repressive and very violent, which probably wouldn't have had to be if the public was in general 'very distrustful'.

Like, the election in 2012 was quite close, and the opponent was well-connected to Mubarak. It's not as if the whole country was pro-Brotherhood anyway.

Or even anti-Mubarak.

But nevertheless, seeing Sisi's alliance as anything other than a repressive government trying to combat a political force that endangers their own power is foolhardy, imo.

my impression is that in the post-mubarak window only the MB had the political infrastructure to organize in time to win. after winning (let's say legitimately but not necessarily as a complete representation of the citizenship) they began to force through anti-democratic measures, particularly morsi's constitution. a lot of ppl who were maybe okay w/ MB having political control, weren't okay w/ them abusing it to push through authoritarian impulses. also (maybe more importantly) MB had trouble attaining any productive domestic goals. they broadly (okay, my word) supported the military coup and then elected sisi in what is also maybe a less-than-ideal election, but still better than MB.

like i remember a lot of popular demonstrations + resistance to morsi before the army stepped in

(which isn't to say sisi wasn't being opportunistic - i'm not a sisi-apologist - but that there was definitely real support for him)

who are all these new gazans who hate israel more than they did since Cast Lead?

1400 brand new dead people probably has a multiplying effect on the number of brand new angry people. to say nothing of, say, 6 year olds who've lost parents.

1800, that is

In the first round, with a voter turnout of 46%, the results were split between five major candidates: Mohamed Morsi (25%), Ahmed Shafik (24%), Hamdeen Sabahi (21%), Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh (18%), and Amr Moussa (11%), while the remaining 2% were split between several smaller candidates. The elections set the stage for the divisions that were to follow, along Islamist and secular lines, and those opposed to and those supporting the former political elite. Islamist candidates Morsi and Fotouh won roughly 42% of the vote, while the remaining secular candidates won 56% of the vote. Candidates Shafik and Moussa held positions under the Mubarak regime and won 35% of the vote, while Sabahi was a prominent dissident during the Sadat and Mubarak regimes.

Following the second round, with a voter turnout of 52%, on 24 June 2012, Egypt's election commission announced that Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi had won Egypt's presidential elections. Morsi won by a narrow margin over Ahmed Shafik, the final prime minister under deposed President Hosni Mubarak. The commission said Morsi took 51.7% of the vote versus 48.3% for Shafik.[2] Morsi was sworn in on 30 June 2012 and was later ousted in a popular uprising or coup on 3 July 2013.

I'm only going on Wiki here but I'd say you could say the MB has both broad popular support and broad popular opposition.

It is interesting that secular candidates combined had the majority in the first round but Morsi won the second round -- maybe the higher turnout was disproportionately MB. I think the MB is better organized than other parties in Egypt and probably has good "get out the vote" ability.

there was definitely popular demonstrations against morsi, but a lot of pro-morsi as well. the millitary shot at them: 600-1200 dead. arrested thousand of islamists, sentenced more than 500 to death. the new government is a military dictatorship based on violence and killing it's opponents. it's not better than mb.

and mb is obviously better organized, was always going to be. there was no political infra-structure in the country, but a religous one. i haven't seen sisi opening the country up, so when he falls in thirty years time, another islamist movement will be ready to win the election.

Also an urban/rural divide, I believe. So after the election the protests were from urban liberals against the MB. But I may be misremembering.

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

Idk about this at all. I wouldn't be sure the organised protests registered particularly strongly in the popular imagination either way. Irrespective of any official BDS movement (if an 'official' movement exists) there's undoubtedly been a hardening of opinion and not just on the left. European leaders have been far less measured than normal, centrist and centre-right newspapers far less sympathetic. I'd expect, at the very least, more pressure on governments in relation to arms sales and more cultural and academic institutions willing to shun events with Israeli government funding behind them. The London Jewish Film Festival has just been barred from its normal venue because they refused to hand back Israeli state funding. I wouldn't necessarily expect a massive increase in the number of people actively backing a wider boycott but I wouldn't be surprised if those opposing one struggle for sympathy for the foreseeable.

i guess i think that making a case for a hamas "victory" here requires more than the possibility that some anti boycotters might struggle for sympathy in the future

It's tough to see this as a Hamas victory. Politically, I suspect Israel is more isolated now than it was six months ago, though. To what extent that helps Hamas isn't clear but I can't really see even broadly sympathetic leaders like Cameron and Merkel having such a free hand to back Israel in public, make state visits, etc.

I don't think anybody argued this was overall a Hamas victory, though, that is a complete non-issue. The original article said that Hamas didn't have a single win, in it's attempt to spin it as an Israeli victory. I argued against that. I don't think anybody has won.

Fwiw, I do think bds has gotten more 'salonfähig' in the Netherlands. In a country where any criticism on Israel used to be seen in a anti-Semitic light, it's getting more accepted to criticize Israel (not "the Jews") for its war crimes. Which is a great thing, and not a mere 'distraction' in light of pr.

On the other hand anti-semitism is roaring its ugly head too, namely at demo's, though it's in small numbers. It's usually a small group of people bringing this (and ISIS flags, wtf) to the streets. Been a whole debate on wether ISIS flags and swastikas (brought to underline the "Israel = nazi germany" 'argument') should be allowed. (I'm against the banning of any flag or symbol myself, let the scum let themselves be known imo)

Lol "this swastika doesnt represent naziism ir antisemitism, it represents Israel and how much we hate the Jews because THEY'RE the nazis!"

yeah that makes sense

Lol yeah I know right.

fwiw baroness warsi, conservative peer & first muslim to sit in the cabinet, resigned from the government today over its handling of gaza. her letter of resignation is here, don't read the comments http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/08/baroness-warsi-resigns/

Wait, is a Baroness a title or position? Or is that her name?