Why is Israel dropping bombs on a prison camp?
 

Has anyone noted the incongruence of this?

Why did the USA today abstain from a UN Security Council vote calling for an immediate cease fire?

I wish Bush would leave post haste.

http://www.juancole.com/2009/01/un-c...series-of.html

Note the part where a US soldier takes umbrage at being compared to the Israeli military.

Powerline posts foreign policy analyst Dan Dike's thoughts on the current conflict:

There may be an idea that the two-state solution is not ever going to happen (both sides).

And Israel will decline due to demographics, emigration, and frankly, loss of support and moral force. But we may be talking decades here.

If Israel doesn't want to negotiate with Hamas, then what do they want? War forever?

Israel has decided that Hamas' own stated purpose and behavior are anathema to negotiations, and I think they are right.

Does Hamas want to negotiate with Israel?

There's always a little more to these stories. Funny how some Americans get suckered into siding with these monsters.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive.../01/022510.php

From what I have read, yes.

I haven't read the above, but let's just say it is true. Contrast that to how Americans are dealing with shelling in Baghdad per the Cole article. They don't just start leveling shelters and residential areas.

It just remains be to seen how far the Israelis will go. At what point will it become actual genocide, and how breathtaking will that irony be?

http://english.aljazeera.net/mritems...38415734_8.jpg

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/w...519821785.html

Nonsense. I think the comparison is poor as the circumstances are very different. Anyway, it's hard to tell the truth in the era of manufactured war imagery.

I think Israel does what it can to avoid civilian casualties (they've apparently dropped leaflets warning Gazans about impending assaults). It already is routinely condemned for legitimately defending itself, there's no reason to compound that by actually targeting innocents. But this is war. If Hamas stops hiding combatants and equipment in schoolyards, probably fewer children will die.

Then again, they may just grow up to die anyway:



Not that breathtaking. Folks like you have been trying to catch their breath at the supposed "irony" for decades, it's a wonder you haven't all hyperventilated and passed out by now.

Israel is becoming, slowly but surely, a pariah state.

I think it is looking at a future when only the Huckabees rush to their defense.

Israel is making war on a prison camp, full of men, women, and children. A prison camp of their own making. One wonders, if in the back of their mind, they are thinking the same thing that many evangelical Christians are--are the Palestinians deserving of a "final solution".

You are apparently just now catching up to the modern day.

The one-state solution:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/200...tate-solution/

There will never be two states.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...-palestinians/

The surreal thing is that as I was getting ready for work today, I was watching "Judgment at Nuremberg" old movie, that at least in the part I was watching, contained graphic documentary footage of concentration camp atrocities.

Thank goodness there are some Jews (many, actually) who are standing up and saying, "Israel has lost its way."

I've actually read from a commentator that "the Holocaust gives us the right to Israel as a Jewish state" (paraphrased). What strange logic it was and is, that the Holocaust gave the right to oppress, the right to run a system that is in many ways, indistinguishable from apartheid.

And what gives them the right to shout down anyone that says the things I am saying.

History will look at the course of Israel, and consider it one of the greatest tragedies of civilization.

What, no claim that Hamas had launched rockets from the facility, or next to it?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/wo...t.html?_r=1&hp

Did we sell Israel planes, tanks, and other weapons with the intention of them using these machines of war against what is essentially a prison camp?

It's interesting that Israel, not surprisingly, claims that Palestinians have no right to any kind of weaponry. While Hamas says they have the right to "rifles" for their people. It seems very clear that Israelis think Israel has the right to rifles and all other kinds of implements of war. I guess when you consider Gaza as nothing more than a prison camp, it would make sense that Palestinians not be given any right to defend themselves.

I guess I am just too impatient. Give it a few minutes, and the Israelis will come up with the proper justification in their media (which they banned from Gaza).

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...cle%2FShowFull

I thought I already posted this morning, but I guess I messed up.



Again, I ask, just as Max Blumenthal asks, what prevents Israel from taking this to its logical end, and perpetrating its own holocaust against the Palestinians?

Morality?

*note: I would guess Tex would describe Mr. Blumental as a "self-loathing Jew". When a member of a group questions the ethics and morality of his own group, he is "self-loathing." It is a way of rejecting the argument without addressing it.

A new poll shows 94% of Israelis strongly support the Gaza operation, and 92% think it helps Israel's security.

The questions themselves don't constitute "self-loathing," but the attitude. I'll post a nice definition sometime. People who are self-loathing don't present arguments worth addressing.

Parenthetically, I wonder if the number of self-loathing Jews is higher or lower per capita than the number of self-loathing Mormons.

The formation of J-Street is an example of how the hegemony of right-wing Israeli politics is starting to end (emphasis on "starting"--it may be decades).

Why are these rebuttals of Israeli war-making I am posting written by Jews? Because only Jews are allowed to criticize Israel without being called anti-Semitic. The strangehold of Israel over American powerbrokers is amazing. Look at the recent example of Olmert claiming that he was able, with one phone call to Bush, change the USA vote in the U.N. on the ceasefire. Obama made terribly bland statements about wanting peace in the region and was attacked as not being pro-Israel.

WTF does "pro-Israel" mean? I mentioned this before, but a member of my bishopric said one reason he didn't like Obama was that he wasn't "pro-Israel" enough. I retorted that it was one of the reasons I *could* like Obama.

The tragedy is very simple: the Jews decided to create a homeland where lots of people were already living. You can't justify injustice by injustice. You can try, but you then you have to be willing to go all the way. You must kill the men, women, children, and cattle (see Old Testament). How much blood will the Chosen People have on their hands before we question these ways?

The question of who has "rights" to the land is very interesting academically, but of very little use practically. Whether or not one decides the formation of the state of Israel was just, it has now existed for 60 years with a population of roughly 7 million people.

Shouting "go back to Eastern Europe!" while you lob a Katyusha rocket into an Israeli settlement strikes me as less-effective.

Yes. The sorts of missiles that the Americans have would be much more effective. And tanks and bombers.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...cle%2FShowFull

The "we are evil, but not as evil as some others" argument.

Yes indeed.

Really, what does Israel want?

They want the prisoners to behave?

They want a painless pleasant occupation and subjugation, all the while declaring themselves the freest nation in the world as they run an apartheid state?

Their folly is creating their own (shared) tragedy.

The geniuses at the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/opinion/16fri1.html

"Wipe them all out. You got to go all the way with this."

"They are forcing us to kill their children to protect our children." In the video.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...pFTtAD95OJ78O0

Now the Israelis have killed two daughters of the Israeli-trained Palestinian doctor who has been reporting on the war on Israeli TV. No doubt with American weapons. And America can't even vote for a ceasefire in the UN, the only country on the UN Security Council to not do so. Olmert claimed he ordered Bush to do so, causing Condie Rice to make an embarrassing about-face in the UN.

Fuck you Bush. Rot in hell Olmert.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...05JyPjA?size=m

Do you believe the Palestinians have any fault in this mess?

Read the Mearsheimer article I just posted.

Many of the arguments that are being made against the Palestinian cause are the same that were used to defend the South African apartheid regime. Nelson Mandela was a veritable monster if you asked the GOP.

I'll read it, but I have to guess that after thouands of years of Israelis and Palestinians hating each other and trying to kill each other, both sides have equal blame. The only difference as far as I see it is that the Israelis don't hate the US as much as the Palestinians do.

US bombs aren't falling on Israel. US bombs are falling on the Palestinians.

And that pretty much explains the difference in opinion between the Israelis and Palestinians when it comes to America.

This isn't the fault of the US. The two sides hated each other long before the western world ever existed.

My dad's wise observation that it takes two to fight is spot on in this case.

If I drove you from your home at gunpoint, and placed you and your family in prison, then I killed a couple of your children in prison, moreover demanded that you not receive any food, water, or medical supplies...

would you characterize your attempt to hit back at me as..."it takes two to fight"?

I'm not sure what the Israelis want? Break the will of a defeated people?

Oh, and btw, in this scenario you are the terrorist and I am the good guy whom God supports. Merely because I say so, and I have a huge powerful lobby who makes it so.

Peace is not possible, says this Jewish man.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...010902324.html

Great thread, Mike. And thanks for the links.

I need to drop by here more often.

Benjamin Netanyahu pledges to expand "existing" settlements in the West Bank.

http://www.reuters.com/article/world...Name=worldNews