Israel/Gaza

yosi

Thought this was a pretty good post on the situation:

The Iron Dome, Press Bias, and Israel's Lack of Strategic Thinking
By Jeffrey Goldberg
Some observations as the Gaza crisis continues to unfold:

1. The Iron Dome anti-rocket and missile defense system seems to work better than most people expected. Israel is becoming very good at shooting down missiles.

2. Israel also seems to be getting better at not killing civilians in Gaza. The numbers are of course too large, and this could change in an instant, but right now the casualty rate is much lower than in Operation Cast Lead. And yes, of course, much smaller than the numbers from the American drone war in Pakistan. Hamas, of course, is trying to maximize civilian casualties. Which brings me to:

3.The media is biased against Israel. Yes, got it. Yes, Israel is being judged harshly. Yes, I know that probably 300 people have been murdered in Syria since this Gaza affair started, and no one cares. An acquaintance of mine, a Syrian living in Beirut, wrote me in frustration about this last night. "We get very little interest from the international press compared to the Palestinians. What should we do to get more attention?"

My advice is to get killed by Jews. Always works. That said, what do pro-Israel people want? And what does Israel itself want? Israel is more powerful than its Palestinian adversaries, and the press almost axiomatically roots for the underdog. There is much greater sympathy for the Palestinian cause than before, which is partially Israel's fault -- if Israel didn't appear to be a colonizer of the West Bank, it would find more sympathy. Jews, and certainly a Jewish state, are never going to win popularity contests, but the situation wouldn't seem quite so dire to Israelis and their friends if people plausibly believed that the Netanyahu government was interested in implementing a two-state solution.

4. Barack Obama hasn't turned against Israel. This is a big surprise to everyone who has not paid attention for the last four years, or who had decided, for nakedly partisan reasons, to paint him as a Jew-hater.

5. Israel's media campaign -- Gamify? -- is disgraceful. David Rothkopf just pointed out to me that people are most influenced by their enemies. In this case, the braggadocio of the IDF is beginning to resemble the braying of various Palestinian terror outfits over the years. All death is tragic, even the deaths of your enemies.

6. I'll be asking the same question over and over again the coming days: What is Israel's long-term strategy? Short-term, I understand: No state can agree to have its civilians rocketed. But long-term, do Israeli leaders believe that they possess a military solution to their political problem in Gaza? There is no way out of this militarily. Israel is not Russia, Gaza is not Chechnya and Netanyahu isn't Putin. Even if Israel were morally capable of acting like Russia, the world would not allow it. So: Is the goal to empower Hamas? Some right-wingers in Israel would prefer Hamas's empowerment, because they want to kill the idea of a two-state solution. But to those leaders who are at least verbally committed to the idea of partition, what is the plan? How do you marginalize Hamas, which seeks the destruction of Jews and the Jewish state, and empower the more moderate forces that govern the West Bank?

Here's one idea: Give Palestinians hope that Israel is serious about the two-state solution. And how do you do that? By reversing the settlement project on the West Bank. It is not unreasonable for Palestinians to doubt the sincerity of Netanyahu on the subject of the two-state solution, when settlements grow ever-thicker. There's no way around this: The idea of a two-state solution will die if Israel continues to treat the West Bank as a suburb of Jerusalem and Kfar Sava, and not as the future location of the state of Palestine.

UPDATE:

7. Hamas also lacks coherent thinking. Here is David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on where Hamas went wrong in this latest round of violence:
Hamas seems to have miscalculated on several fronts. First, it may have believed that Israel would avoid major action for fear of antagonizing the new government in Cairo, given Gaza's proximity to Egypt and Hamas's close ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. It may also have believed that recent shows of regional solidarity (including the Qatari emir's visit to Gaza last month and ongoing support from Turkey) would raise the diplomatic cost of Israeli action to prohibitive levels.

In addition, Hamas may not have expected an attack against a high-profile target like Jabari, which was a change from Israel's pattern of sporadic retaliation to rocket fire. Indeed, Israel considered him a leading terrorist -- he was responsible for overseeing at least one suicide bombing in the late 1990s and was key in Hamas operations during the second intifada, when the group carried out numerous suicide attacks. And when Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, he organized its fighters into a military force with companies, battalions, and brigades. Jabari is also believed to have overseen the detention of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, allowing himself to be photographed when Shalit was swapped for Palestinian prisoners last year.

yosi

Gimme, I assume you'll read this at some point, so I'd like to pick up on some things you posted recently.

Regarding the IDF's precision targeting...according to UN estimates the average ratio for militaries around the world of civilian to combatant casualties is 3 to 1. That is to say 3 civilians killed for every 1 combatant killed. In Iraq and Kosovo the estimates are that the ratio was 4 to 1. It is assumed that the ratios in Serbia and Chechnya were much higher. The ratio for the IDF's operations in Gaza in 2003 was 1 to 1, far better than the global average. Since 2003 the IDF's civilian to combatant ratio has gotten even better - the current ratio is 1 to 30, meaning that for every civilian killed in Israeli airforce attacks in Gaza 30 combatants are killed. Leaving aside questions of politics, I think it is reasonable, in light of the sheer statistics, to at least acknowledge that the Israeli military is expending a great deal of effort to avoid civilian casualties, and is now much better at doing so than pretty much every other military on earth.

With regard to your comment about calorie restrictions imposed on Gaza, as I understand it that is simply not the case. There is no calorie restriction currently being imposed on Gaza.

Finally, I'd just like to push back on your statement of support for the Palestinians fighting back against their occupiers...I have no problem, in general, with people supporting Palestinian resistance to occupation, but I think that in the current context you must, as such a supporter, answer the question of how it is that blindly firing hundreds of rockets into densely populated civilian areas is a legitimate form of resistance?

I also think that you have to answer the question of how, exactly, you think Israel should respond to such attacks on its civilians? Perhaps you'll say that they should respond by ending the occupation...I agree with that, but it's much easier said than done, and doesn't, I think, bear on the immediate issue confronting the Israeli government, namely, that 1/6 of its civilian population can't venture anywhere that isn't close to a bomb shelter for fear of being caught outside when the siren sounds. I also want the occupation to end, but even the most dovish government (which clearly this one is not) couldn't accomplish that overnight, and is responsible for the safety of its citizens in the meantime. Perhaps the military isn't the right solution (I very much doubt that it is in this instance), but I think if you're going to criticize the Israeli government for taking action to protect its citizens it's reasonable to ask you what you think their alternatives are?

caifan82

yosi wrote:

the press almost axiomatically roots for the underdog.

Oh, so the reason why the overwhelming majority of the world “roots” for the Palestinians has nothing to do with the fact that they are attacked (militarily or economically or otherwise) on a daily basis by a power that has their populations subjugated to the point of desperation… it’s just that they are the “underdog”, like this was a football match.

Ok, got it!

:roll:

yosi

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I agree with everything stated in the article (because I don't)...

I agree with you that there are very legitimate reasons to favor the Palestinians over Israel...that said, I do think that the media favors "underdogs" as a general rule, if for no other reason than they're in the business of selling papers (or ad time), and underdog stories make for better copy.

Hugh Freaking Dillon

yosi wrote:

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I agree with everything stated in the article (because I don't)...

I agree with you that there are very legitimate reasons to favor the Palestinians over Israel...that said, I do think that the media favors "underdogs" as a general rule, if for no other reason than they're in the business of selling papers (or ad time), and underdog stories make for better copy.

I never saw any papers rooting for Iraq the last several years.

Thoughts_Arrive

The attacks on Palestine are criminal.
Acting like bullies because the US government is on their side.

gimmesometruth27

yosi i will get to the rest of your post later. but as far as calorie restrictons goes, i started a thread about it some time ago. whether it was implemented or not is not the question. the question is why was israel even considering using food, or the lack of food, as a weapon to punish the leaders of hamas, and by proxy, the people of gaza?

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=197627&p=4702679#p4702679

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

Thought this was a pretty good post on the situation:

The Iron Dome, Press Bias, and Israel's Lack of Strategic Thinking
By Jeffrey Goldberg
Some observations as the Gaza crisis continues to unfold:

1. The Iron Dome anti-rocket and missile defense system seems to work better than most people expected. Israel is becoming very good at shooting down missiles.

2. Israel also seems to be getting better at not killing civilians in Gaza. The numbers are of course too large, and this could change in an instant, but right now the casualty rate is much lower than in Operation Cast Lead. And yes, of course, much smaller than the numbers from the American drone war in Pakistan. Hamas, of course, is trying to maximize civilian casualties. Which brings me to:

3.The media is biased against Israel. Yes, got it. Yes, Israel is being judged harshly. Yes, I know that probably 300 people have been murdered in Syria since this Gaza affair started, and no one cares. An acquaintance of mine, a Syrian living in Beirut, wrote me in frustration about this last night. "We get very little interest from the international press compared to the Palestinians. What should we do to get more attention?"

My advice is to get killed by Jews. Always works. That said, what do pro-Israel people want? And what does Israel itself want? Israel is more powerful than its Palestinian adversaries, and the press almost axiomatically roots for the underdog. There is much greater sympathy for the Palestinian cause than before, which is partially Israel's fault -- if Israel didn't appear to be a colonizer of the West Bank, it would find more sympathy. Jews, and certainly a Jewish state, are never going to win popularity contests, but the situation wouldn't seem quite so dire to Israelis and their friends if people plausibly believed that the Netanyahu government was interested in implementing a two-state solution.

4. Barack Obama hasn't turned against Israel. This is a big surprise to everyone who has not paid attention for the last four years, or who had decided, for nakedly partisan reasons, to paint him as a Jew-hater.

5. Israel's media campaign -- Gamify? -- is disgraceful. David Rothkopf just pointed out to me that people are most influenced by their enemies. In this case, the braggadocio of the IDF is beginning to resemble the braying of various Palestinian terror outfits over the years. All death is tragic, even the deaths of your enemies.

6. I'll be asking the same question over and over again the coming days: What is Israel's long-term strategy? Short-term, I understand: No state can agree to have its civilians rocketed. But long-term, do Israeli leaders believe that they possess a military solution to their political problem in Gaza? There is no way out of this militarily. Israel is not Russia, Gaza is not Chechnya and Netanyahu isn't Putin. Even if Israel were morally capable of acting like Russia, the world would not allow it. So: Is the goal to empower Hamas? Some right-wingers in Israel would prefer Hamas's empowerment, because they want to kill the idea of a two-state solution. But to those leaders who are at least verbally committed to the idea of partition, what is the plan? How do you marginalize Hamas, which seeks the destruction of Jews and the Jewish state, and empower the more moderate forces that govern the West Bank?

Here's one idea: Give Palestinians hope that Israel is serious about the two-state solution. And how do you do that? By reversing the settlement project on the West Bank. It is not unreasonable for Palestinians to doubt the sincerity of Netanyahu on the subject of the two-state solution, when settlements grow ever-thicker. There's no way around this: The idea of a two-state solution will die if Israel continues to treat the West Bank as a suburb of Jerusalem and Kfar Sava, and not as the future location of the state of Palestine.

UPDATE:

7. Hamas also lacks coherent thinking. Here is David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on where Hamas went wrong in this latest round of violence:
Hamas seems to have miscalculated on several fronts. First, it may have believed that Israel would avoid major action for fear of antagonizing the new government in Cairo, given Gaza's proximity to Egypt and Hamas's close ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. It may also have believed that recent shows of regional solidarity (including the Qatari emir's visit to Gaza last month and ongoing support from Turkey) would raise the diplomatic cost of Israeli action to prohibitive levels.

In addition, Hamas may not have expected an attack against a high-profile target like Jabari, which was a change from Israel's pattern of sporadic retaliation to rocket fire. Indeed, Israel considered him a leading terrorist -- he was responsible for overseeing at least one suicide bombing in the late 1990s and was key in Hamas operations during the second intifada, when the group carried out numerous suicide attacks. And when Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, he organized its fighters into a military force with companies, battalions, and brigades. Jabari is also believed to have overseen the detention of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, allowing himself to be photographed when Shalit was swapped for Palestinian prisoners last year.

This article is so full of distortions, half-truths, and outright lies, that It'd take me all day to list them all.

Just another self-serving diatribe from one of America's leading Israel-apologists.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

I also want the occupation to end, but even the most dovish government (which clearly this one is not) couldn't accomplish that overnight, and is responsible for the safety of its citizens in the meantime.

Overnight? They've had 60 years to abide by international law and withdraw from the occupied territories.

Hugh Freaking Dillon

yosi wrote:

Thought this was a pretty good post on the situation:

The Iron Dome, Press Bias, and Israel's Lack of Strategic Thinking
By Jeffrey Goldberg
Some observations as the Gaza crisis continues to unfold:

1. The Iron Dome anti-rocket and missile defense system seems to work better than most people expected. Israel is becoming very good at shooting down missiles.

2. Israel also seems to be getting better at not killing civilians in Gaza. The numbers are of course too large, and this could change in an instant, but right now the casualty rate is much lower than in Operation Cast Lead. And yes, of course, much smaller than the numbers from the American drone war in Pakistan. Hamas, of course, is trying to maximize civilian casualties. Which brings me to:

3.The media is biased against Israel. Yes, got it. Yes, Israel is being judged harshly. Yes, I know that probably 300 people have been murdered in Syria since this Gaza affair started, and no one cares. An acquaintance of mine, a Syrian living in Beirut, wrote me in frustration about this last night. "We get very little interest from the international press compared to the Palestinians. What should we do to get more attention?"

My advice is to get killed by Jews. Always works. That said, what do pro-Israel people want? And what does Israel itself want? Israel is more powerful than its Palestinian adversaries, and the press almost axiomatically roots for the underdog. There is much greater sympathy for the Palestinian cause than before, which is partially Israel's fault -- if Israel didn't appear to be a colonizer of the West Bank, it would find more sympathy. Jews, and certainly a Jewish state, are never going to win popularity contests, but the situation wouldn't seem quite so dire to Israelis and their friends if people plausibly believed that the Netanyahu government was interested in implementing a two-state solution.

4. Barack Obama hasn't turned against Israel. This is a big surprise to everyone who has not paid attention for the last four years, or who had decided, for nakedly partisan reasons, to paint him as a Jew-hater.

5. Israel's media campaign -- Gamify? -- is disgraceful. David Rothkopf just pointed out to me that people are most influenced by their enemies. In this case, the braggadocio of the IDF is beginning to resemble the braying of various Palestinian terror outfits over the years. All death is tragic, even the deaths of your enemies.

6. I'll be asking the same question over and over again the coming days: What is Israel's long-term strategy? Short-term, I understand: No state can agree to have its civilians rocketed. But long-term, do Israeli leaders believe that they possess a military solution to their political problem in Gaza? There is no way out of this militarily. Israel is not Russia, Gaza is not Chechnya and Netanyahu isn't Putin. Even if Israel were morally capable of acting like Russia, the world would not allow it. So: Is the goal to empower Hamas? Some right-wingers in Israel would prefer Hamas's empowerment, because they want to kill the idea of a two-state solution. But to those leaders who are at least verbally committed to the idea of partition, what is the plan? How do you marginalize Hamas, which seeks the destruction of Jews and the Jewish state, and empower the more moderate forces that govern the West Bank?

Here's one idea: Give Palestinians hope that Israel is serious about the two-state solution. And how do you do that? By reversing the settlement project on the West Bank. It is not unreasonable for Palestinians to doubt the sincerity of Netanyahu on the subject of the two-state solution, when settlements grow ever-thicker. There's no way around this: The idea of a two-state solution will die if Israel continues to treat the West Bank as a suburb of Jerusalem and Kfar Sava, and not as the future location of the state of Palestine.

UPDATE:

7. Hamas also lacks coherent thinking. Here is David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on where Hamas went wrong in this latest round of violence:
Hamas seems to have miscalculated on several fronts. First, it may have believed that Israel would avoid major action for fear of antagonizing the new government in Cairo, given Gaza's proximity to Egypt and Hamas's close ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. It may also have believed that recent shows of regional solidarity (including the Qatari emir's visit to Gaza last month and ongoing support from Turkey) would raise the diplomatic cost of Israeli action to prohibitive levels.

In addition, Hamas may not have expected an attack against a high-profile target like Jabari, which was a change from Israel's pattern of sporadic retaliation to rocket fire. Indeed, Israel considered him a leading terrorist -- he was responsible for overseeing at least one suicide bombing in the late 1990s and was key in Hamas operations during the second intifada, when the group carried out numerous suicide attacks. And when Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, he organized its fighters into a military force with companies, battalions, and brigades. Jabari is also believed to have overseen the detention of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, allowing himself to be photographed when Shalit was swapped for Palestinian prisoners last year.

with a last name like Goldberg, I'm pretty sure I know where this guy stands.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

I think it is reasonable, in light of the sheer statistics, to at least acknowledge that the Israeli military is expending a great deal of effort to avoid civilian casualties, and is now much better at doing so than pretty much every other military on earth.

Of course it is Yosi. It's perfectly true to anyone who happens to inhabit a topsy-turvy World like something Alice in Wonderland experienced.



Norman Finkelstein - 'Knowing Too Much' - Why The American Jewish Romance With Israel Is Coming To An End
P.116: "Indiscriminate attacks differ from direct attacks against civilians,' Israel's leading authority on International law, Yoram Dinstein, observed, in that "the attacker is not actually trying to harm the civilian population": the injury to the civilians is merely a matter of "no concern to the attacker." From the standpoint of LOIAC [Law of International Armed Conflict], there is no genuine difference between a premeditated attack against civilians (or civilian objects) and a reckless disregard of the principle of distinction: they are equally forbidden. [Yoram Dinstein - 'The Conduct of Hostilities under the law of International Armed Conflict' 2004].

Is this what you mean by Israel 'expending a great deal of effort to avoid civilian casualties', Yosi?

Norman Finkelstein - 'Knowing Too Much' - Why The American Jewish Romance With Israel Is Coming To An End
P.145: In February 2008 HRW [Human Rights Watch] issued a report entitled 'Flooding South Lebanon: Israel's use of cluster munitions in Lebanon in July and August 2006'. The report found that Israel dropped as many as 4.6 million cluster submunitions on south Lebanon during the war. It was the "most extensive use of cluster munitions anywhere in the world since the 1991 Gulf war," while relative to the size of the targeted area the density of the attack was historically unprecendented. (Apparently the only reason Israel did not drop yet more cluster munitions was that it's stocks had been depleted). Some 90 percent of these cluster munitions were dropped "during the final three days when Israel knew a settlement was imminent," the U.N ceasefire resolution having already been passed but not yet gone into effect.

P146: Israel's cluster munition attacks on Lebanon were indiscriminate in multiple respects: the inaccuracy of their delivery (or carrier) systems; the "wide dispersal patterns" of such weapons; and the "high dud rates" endangering civilians returning to their homes after the ceasefire. In addition, the saturation use of these weapons in civilian areas multiplied manyfold the inherent dangers posed by them.

P.147: HRW reported that Israel's cluster attacks "blanketed" both "built-up areas" and "fields", resulting in the high saturation of towns and villages," and the "systematic 'flooding' of certain villages and populated areas."

The "vast majority" of cluster munitions targeted "population centers" such as towns and villages. In the village of Yohmor, "bomblets littered the ground from one end...to the other. They were on the roofs of all the houses, in gardens and spread across roads and paths. Some were even found inside houses." In the village of Zwtar al-Sharkiyeh deminers had to remove "2000-3000 submunitions" inundating a primary school and it's environs, although "Hezbollah had not used the school at any time during the war and there had been no Hezbollah forces anywhere in the town."
Meanwhile, according to a "very conservative" estimate, "submunitions contaminated at least 26 percent of south Lebanon's agricultural land," transforming olive and citrus groves and tobacco fields into "de facto minefields." Many fields were simply "abandoned," while desperate farmers continued to work others despite the lethal hazards. From the ceasefire until December 2009 the explosion of duds caused 227 civilian casualties, of whom 35 percent were children.

P148: According to HRW, individuals bear responsibility for "war crimes" if they "intentionally or recklessly" authorize or conduct attacks "that would indiscriminately or disproportionately harm civilians." In other iterations HRW defines war crimes as attacks that are "knowingly or recklessly indiscriminate or deliberate"; the "knowing or reckless disregard for the foreseeable effects on civilians and other protected objects"; "deliberate attacks on civilians, as well as indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks when committed with knowledge or reckless indifference to their illegal character": military justification and with criminal intent."

P.149: Consider now HRW's description of the Israeli cluster attacks on Lebanon:

By their very nature, these dangerous, volatile submunitions [i.e, the duds] cannot distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, forseeably endangering civilians for months or years to come.

It is inconceivable that Israel...did not know that...it's strikes would have a lasting humanitarian impact.

Many of the cluster attacks on populated areas do not appear to have had a definite military target. Our researchers...found only one village with clear evidence of the presence of Hezbollah forces out of the more than 40 towns and villages they visited.

The staggering number of cluster munitions rained on south Lebanon over the three days immediately before a negotiated ceasefire went into effect puts in doubt the claim by the IDF that it's attacks were aimed at specific targets or even strategic locations, as opposed to being efforts to blanket large areas with explosives and duds.

Cluster munition attacks on or near population centers, like those launched by Israel, give rise to a presumption that they are indiscriminate, as the weapons are highly imprecise with a large area effect that regularly causes foreseeable and excessive civilian casualties during strikes and afterwards.

P.150: Given the extremely large number of submunitions employed and their known failure rates, harm to remaning and returning civilians was entirely foreseeable.

Israel was well aware of the continuing harm to Lebanese civilians from the unexploded duds that remained from it's prior use of munitions in South Lebanon in 1978 and 1982.

The paucity of evidence of specific military objectives, the known dangers of cluster munitions, the timing of large scale attacks days before an anticipated ceasefire, and the massive scope of the attacks combine to point to a conclusion that the attacks were of an indiscriminate and disproportionate character.

A senior U.N demining official said he had "no doubt" that Israel had deliberately hit built-up areas with cluster munitions, stating "these cluster bombs were dropped in the middle of villages".

Israeli soldiers were well aware of the large numbers of duds their cluster strikes were producing. A soldier said that his...commander gave a "pep talk" after a period of heavy fire, saying, "just wait until Hezbollah finds the little presents we had left them".

Given the sheer number of cluster duds on the ground, casualties are unavoidable.

P.151: In South Lebanon in 2006, Israel employed a means of warfare that was likely to cause significant harm to civilians - unreliable and inaccurate submunitions used widely and heavily in populated areas. Despite ample past experience of the deadly effects of cluster duds on the civilian population of South Lebanon, awareness of the impending end of the war, and the knowledge that there would be a legacy of unexploded duds creating de facto minefields, the IDF did not refrain from launching these attacks...The post-ceasefire casualties have to our knowledge all been civilians or deminers, and civilian access to agricultural areas and property has ben severely affected. The aftereffects of israel's cluster strikes were foreseeable by the IDF.

The paucity of evidence of specific military objectives, the known dangers of cluster munitions, the time of large-scale attacks days before an anticipated ceasefire, and the massive scope of the attacks themselves lead to the conclusion that the attacks were of an indiscriminate and disproportionate character.

We found scant evidence that would demonstrate a concrete and direct military advantage with relation to any possible military objectives, such as attacking fighters, rocket launchers, or strategic locales.

When considering the foreseeable civilian damage that could ensue, the anticipated and soon-approaching end to the armed conflict weighs heavily against Israel's last-minute saturation of civilian areas with old cluster stockpiles...The fact that duds would turn civilian areas into de facto minefields, given the large number of submunitions employed and their known failure rates, was foreseeable - testimony from soldiers (and the reported IDF prohibition of firing cluster munitions into areas it would subsequently enter) indicate that the IDF knew this.


A composite distillation of these HRW statements would read: Just before an agreed-upon ceasefire Israel saturated Lebanese civilian areas having no military targets with cluster munitions; the inevitable and foreseeable - in fact foreseen - consequence was that many Lebanese civilians were injured and killed.


P.152: Like HRW, the U.N Commission of Inquiry found that Israeli cluster attacks were indiscriminate...many towns and villages were littered with the bomblets as well as large tracts of agricultural land," and that "the use of cluster munitions by [the] IDF was of no military advantage."



http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/sep/06/israel
Israeli soldiers tell of indiscriminate killings by army and a culture of impunity

In recent months dozens of soldiers, including the son of an an Israeli general, all recently discharged, have come forward to share their stories of how they were ordered in briefings to shoot to kill unarmed people without fear of reprimand.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/sep/06/israel1
Israeli troops say they were given shoot-to-kill order

Israeli military prosecutors have opened criminal investigations following allegations by soldiers that they carried out illegal shoot-to-kill orders against unarmed Palestinians.

Some of the soldiers, who also spoke to the Guardian, say they acted on standing orders in some parts of the Palestinian territories to open fire on people regardless of whether they were armed or not, or posed any physical threat.

The soldiers say that in some situations they were ordered to shoot anyone who appeared on a roof or a balcony, anyone who appeared to be kneeling to the ground or anyone who appeared on the street at a designated time. Among those killed by soldiers acting on the orders were young children.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/ ... -does-fit/
Human Rights Watch reports that of the “twenty-two civilian killings” during the Israeli siege of Jenin, “Many of them were killed willfully or unlawfully, and in some cases constituted war crimes. Fifty-seven-year-old Kamal Zghair, a wheelchair-bound man, was shot and then run over by IDF tanks on April 10 as he was moving his wheelchair—equipped with a white flag—down a major road in Jenin. Thirty-seven-year-old Jamal Fayid, a quadriplegic, was crushed to death in the rubble of his home on April 7 after IDF soldiers refused to allow his family to remove him from their home before a bulldozer destroyed it.”

Byrnzie

Wow, what a surprise!And Americans wonder why they're hated around the World? Maybe you should look to your government's foreign policy for the answer to that one.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/no ... srael-gaza

US gives 'full backing' to Israel

The Israeli ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren[...] "The United States has given us the full backing to take whatever measures are necessary to defend our citizens from Hamas terror," he said. "Israel has received unequivocal and outstanding support from the United States and all branches of government. From the White House, from Congress, in both parties, completely bipartisan support."

...The Israeli ambassador has been leading a PR drive in Washington to cast Israel as the innocent victim of indiscriminate terror attacks, a claim strongly challenged by Palestinians who accuse Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, of engineering the conflict as a political strategy in the run-up to January's general election.

...The Palestinian delegation to the US accused Washington of taking Israel's side.

"The United States response is at best biased and weak because it completely ignored the fact that Israel started the escalation. The US has a moral obligation to ask Israel not to deploy its US-made weapons to kill and injure civilians. The US is also expected to tell Israel that there is no military solution to the conflict. The only way to achieve peace is to uproot the cause of its absence: Israel's military occupation of Palestine," it said. "It is shameful that certain countries are justifying the murder of Palestinian civilians. It is time for all to understand that Palestinian lives are as precious as any others in the region and around the world. The political complicity must end and Israel must be held accountable."

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

3.The media is biased against Israel. Yes, got it. Yes, Israel is being judged harshly. Yes, I know that probably 300 people have been murdered in Syria since this Gaza affair started, and no one cares. An acquaintance of mine, a Syrian living in Beirut, wrote me in frustration about this last night. "We get very little interest from the international press compared to the Palestinians. What should we do to get more attention?"

Sure, the media is biased against Israel. And Goldberg's only proof of this is to ask why they aren't focusing on the situation in Syria instead.
Though being familiar with the topsy-turvy universe that Israel's apologists inhabit, this really comes as no surprise.


Meanwhile...

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/mau ... a-coverage

Linguists, including Noam Chomsky, condemn "reprehensible" Gaza coverage
Wednesday 11/14/2012



The Electronic Intifada received today the following statement from international academics who recently participated in a conference on linguistics at the Islamic University of Gaza which decries major media outlets’ failure to report on recent killings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces in Gaza. I wrote about this pattern of omission and bias on my blog earlier today, focusing on The New York Times’ omission of Palestinian civilian casualties and its privileging of Israeli military and government officials in its report on today’s attacks.


Media reporting on Gaza: Nous accusons.

While countries across Europe and North America commemorated military casualties of past and present wars on November 11, Israel was targeting civilians. On November 12, waking up to a new week, readers at breakfast were flooded with heart rending accounts of past and current military casualties. There was, however, no or little mention of the fact that the majority of casualties of modern day wars are civilians. There was also hardly any mention on the morning of November 12 of military attacks on Gaza that continued throughout the weekend. A cursory scan confirms this for Canada’s CBC, the Globe and Mail, Montreal’s Gazette, and the Toronto Star. Equally, for the New York Times and for the BBC.

According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) report on Sunday November 11, five Palestinian civilians including three children had been killed in the Gaza strip in the previous 72 hours, in addition to two Palestinian security personnel. Four of the deaths occurred as a result of Israeli military firing artillery shells on youngsters playing soccer. Moreover, 52 civilians had been wounded, of which six were women and 12 were children. (Since we began composing this text, the Palestinian death toll has risen, and continues to rise.)

Articles that do report on the killings overwhelmingly focus on the killing of Palestinian security personnel. For example, an Associated Press article published in the CBC world news on November 13, entitled Israel mulls resuming targeted killings of Gaza militants, mentions absolutely nothing of civilian deaths and injuries. It portrays the killings as ‘targeted assassinations’. The fact that casualties have overwhelmingly been civilians indicates that Israel is not so much engaged in “targeted” killings, as in “collective” killings, thus once again committing the crime of collective punishment. Another AP item on CBC news from November 12 reads Gaza rocket fire raises pressure on Israel government. It features a photo of an Israeli woman gazing on a hole in her living room ceiling. Again, no images, nor mention of the numerous bleeding casualties or corpses in Gaza. Along the same lines, a BBC headline on November 12 reads Israel hit by fresh volley of rockets from Gaza. Similar trend can be illustrated for European mainstream papers.

News items overwhelmingly focus on the rockets that have been fired from Gaza, none of which have caused human casualties. What is not in focus are the shellings and bombardments on Gaza, which have resulted in numerous severe and fatal casualties. It doesn’t take an expert in media science to understand that what we are facing is at best shoddy and skewed reporting, and at worst willfully dishonest manipulation of the readership.

Furthermore, articles that do mention the Palestinian casualties in Gaza consistently report that Israeli operations are in response to rockets from Gaza and to the injuring of Israeli soldiers. However, the chronology of events of the recent flare-up began onNovember 5, when an innocent, apparently mentally unfit, 20-year old man, Ahmad al-Nabaheen, was shot when he wandered close to the border. Medics had to wait for six hours to be permitted to pick him up and they suspect that he may have died because of that delay. Then, on November 8, a 13-year old boy playing football in front of his house was killed by fire from the IOF that had moved into Gazan territory with tanks as well as helicopters. The wounding of four Israeli soldiers at the border on November 10 was therefore already part of a chain of events where Gazan civilians had been killed, and not the triggering event.

We, the signatories, have recently returned from a visit to the Gaza Strip. Some among us are now connected to Palestinians living in Gaza through social media. For two nights in a row Palestinians in Gaza were prevented from sleeping through continued engagement of drones, F16s, and indiscriminate bombings of various targets inside the densely populated Gaza strip. The intent of this is clearly to terrorise the population, successfully so, as we can ascertain from our friends’ reports. If it was not for Facebook postings, we would not be aware of the degree of terror felt by ordinary Palestinian civilians in Gaza. This stands in stark contrast to the world’s awareness of terrorised and shock-treated Israeli citizens.

An extract of a report sent by a Canadian medic who happened to be in Gaza and helped out in Shifa hospital ER over the weekend says: “the wounded were all civilians with multiple puncture wounds from shrapnel: brain injuries, neck injuries, hemo-pneumo thorax, pericardial tamponade, splenic rupture, intestinal perforations, slatted limbs, traumatic amputations. All of this with no monitors, few stethoscopes, one ultrasound machine. …. Many people with serious but non life threatening injuries were sent home to be re-assessed in the morning due to the sheer volume of casualties. The penetrating shrapnel injuries were spooky. Tiny wounds with massive internal injuries. … There was very little morphine for analgesia.”

Apparently such scenes are not newsworthy for the New York Times, the CBC, or the BBC.

Bias and dishonesty with respect to the oppression of Palestinians is nothing new in Western media and has been widely documented. Nevertheless, Israel continues its crimes against humanity with full acquiescence and financial, military, and moral support from our governments, the U.S., Canada and the EU. Netanyahu is currently garnering Western diplomatic support for additional operations in Gaza, which makes us worry that another Cast Lead may be on the horizon. In fact, the very recent events are confirming such an escalation has already begun, as today’s death-count climbs. The lack of widespread public outrage at these crimes is a direct consequence of the systematic way in which the facts are withheld and/or of the skewed way these crimes are portrayed.

We wish to express our outrage at the reprehensible media coverage of these acts in the mainstream (corporate) media. We call on journalists around the world working for corporate media outlets to refuse to be instruments of this systematic policy of disguise. We call on citizens to inform themselves through independent media, and to voice their conscience by whichever means is accessible to them.

Hagit Borer, linguist, Queen Mary University of London (UK)

Antoine Bustros, composer and writer, Montreal (Canada)

Noam Chomsky, linguist, Massachussetts Institute of Technology, US

David Heap, linguist, University of Western Ontario (Canada)

Stephanie Kelly, linguist, University of Western Ontario (Canada)

Máire Noonan, linguist, McGill University (Canada)

Philippe Prévost, linguist, University of Tours (France)

Verena Stresing, biochemist, University of Nantes (France)

Laurie Tuller, linguist, University of Tours (France)

Byrnzie

kenny olav

This is a collection of photos I found that shows the terror happening on both sides: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012 ... za/100407/

The horrific crimes human beings commit against each other seem endless.
Maybe human DNA is to blame.

Byrnzie

kenny olav wrote:

Maybe human DNA is to blame.

No, not human DNA. The Israeli occupation is to blame.

yosi

B, two wrongs don't make a right. That was covered in Kindergarten.

Also, I choose to place more trust in statistics than hearsay. They seem more reliable to me as a general rule.

Hugh Freaking Dillon, what the fuck do you mean by "with a last name like Goldberg, I'm pretty sure I know where this guy stands."?! The man's got a Jewish name so clearly he must be a blind supporter of Israel no matter what they do such that you don't have to actually consider what he has to say because you can assume that you already know what positions he'll take?!

Shame.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

B, two wrongs don't make a right. That was covered in Kindergarten.

Is that how you justify Israel's ongoing land-grab and ethnic cleansing? By blaming the conflict on Palestinian resistance to the occupation with 'two wrongs don't make a right'?

yosi wrote:

Also, I choose to place more trust in statistics than hearsay. They seem more reliable to me as a general rule.

Hearsay? Is that your definition of official reports by Human Rights Watch, and the U.N Commission of Inquiry?

How about you address the points I raised re: Israel's deliberate attacks on Palestinians, instead of sidestepping them?

yosi

I'm not trying to justify anything. The saying "two wrongs don't make a right" implies that there are two wrongs to begin with. What I'm pointing out is that you're implicitly trying to justify the wrongs perpetrated by the Palestinians as merely a response to Israel's actions (which is exactly the same thing that blind supporters of Israel do, just in reverse). I blame Israel for what it does wrong, and the Palestinians for what they do wrong. I see no reason why either side should be let off the hook. Do you?

yosi

B, I get that you want to believe that Israel is just out to massacre Palestinian babies, but I'm curious to know how it is that you can explain that Israel is conducting its military affairs vis a vis the Palestinians in the utterly callous and indescriminate manner you describe and yet is at the same time managing to be so precise in its attacks that it is able to maintain an unheard of, best in the world, civilian to combatant casualty ratio of 1 to 30?

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

I'm not trying to justify anything. The saying "two wrongs don't make a right" implies that there are two wrongs to begin with. What I'm pointing out is that you're implicitly trying to justify the wrongs perpetrated by the Palestinians as merely a response to Israel's actions (which is exactly the same thing that blind supporters of Israel do, just in reverse). I blame Israel for what it does wrong, and the Palestinians for what they do wrong. I see no reason why either side should be let off the hook. Do you?

And what are these two a-priori wrongs that you mention? Was the fact that the Palestinians were living peacefully on their own land for 1000 years, wrong? Is it wrong for the Palestinians to resist their dispossession by the Israeli's? Is it wrong to fight back against ethnic cleansing?

http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/42/a42r159.htm
General Assembly
94th plenary meeting - 7 December 1987

8. Also urges all States, unilaterally and in co-operation with other States, as well as relevant United Nations organs, to contribute to the progressive elimination of the causes underlying international terrorism and to pay special attention to all situations, including colonialism, racism and situations involving mass and flagrant violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms and those involving alien domination and occupation, that may give rise to international terrorism and may endanger international peace and security;


14. Considers that nothing in the present resolution could in any way prejudice the right to self-determination, freedom and independence, as derived from the Charter of the United Nations, of peoples forcibly deprived of that right referred to in the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes and foreign occupation or other forms of colonial domination, nor, in accordance with the principles of the Charter and in conformity with the above-mentioned Declaration, the right of these peoples to struggle to this end and to seek and receive support;