Israeli War Crimes In Gaza!

[coffin_dodger]

There was a time when the BBC was much more even handed than it is now.

Really?

When was that?

[Morty]

*I've been posting on a university based public forum, and there have only been 2 Israel/Gaza war threads, both looking at the war crime angle, with much debate on both of them. The hasbara crew has been swamped, but they keep bouncing back, as you'd expect. One OP, by a lawyer, argued that just because there are many people/civilians killed on one side it doesn't necessarily mean war crimes have been committed. The argument goes, or rather one rule of war says, so long as the military action is proportional to the military objective, then civilian deaths are just "incidental" and are not war crimes:

Rule 14. Proportionality in Attack
Rule 14. Launching an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, is prohibited.

So the sky's the limit, really. If you can think up a plausible sounding military objective that all the important people take seriously - like "stopping the terror" "stopping the terror rockets" "destroying the terror tunnels" - you can kill as many people as you like according to that rule of war.

But before that there's the whole "occupied" classification. If Gaza is classed as Israeli occupied territory Israel has obligations to protect the citizenry, not bomb them, but Israel has gone out of its way to cast itself as no longer being an occupying power over Gaza.

And as Noam Chomsky was saying the other day, only the losing side are ever pursued for war crimes. I think he said that. I can't find it now in his lengthy recent essay.

Here's a lengthy excerpt:

For Gaza, the plans for the norm were explained forthrightly by Dov Weissglass, a confidant of Ariel Sharon, the person who negotiated the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2005. Hailed as a grand gesture in Israel and among acolytes and the deluded elsewhere, the withdrawal was in reality a carefully staged “national trauma,” properly ridiculed by informed Israeli commentators, among them Israel’s leading sociologist, the late Baruch Kimmerling.

What actually happened is that Israeli hawks, led by Sharon, realized that it made good sense to transfer the illegal settlers from their subsidized communities in devastated Gaza, where they were sustained at exorbitant cost, to subsidized settlements in the other occupied territories, which Israel intends to keep. But instead of simply transferring them, as would have been simple enough, it was clearly more useful to present the world with images of little children pleading with soldiers not to destroy their homes, amidst cries of “Never Again,” with the implication obvious. What made the farce even more transparent was that it was a replica of the staged trauma when Israel had to evacuate the Egyptian Sinai in 1982. But it played very well for the intended audience at home and abroad.

Weissglass provided his own description of the transfer of settlers from Gaza to other occupied territories: “What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that [the major settlement blocs in the West Bank] would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns” – but a special kind of Finns, who would quietly accept rule by a foreign power. “The significance is the freezing of the political process,” Weissglass continued. “And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with [President Bush's] authority and permission and the ratification of both houses of Congress.”

Weisglass explained further that Gazans would remain “on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger” – which would not help Israel’s fading reputation. With their vaunted technical efficiency, Israeli experts determined precisely how many calories a day Gazans needed for bare survival, while also depriving them of medicines and other means of decent life. Israeli military forces confined them by land, sea and air to what British Prime Minister David Cameron accurately described as a prison camp. The Israeli withdrawal left Israel in total control of Gaza, hence the occupying power under international law. And to close the prison walls even more tightly, Israel excluded Palestinians from a large region along the border, including a third or more of Gaza’s scarce arable land. The justification is security for Israelis, which could be just as well achieved by establishing the security zone on the Israeli side of the border, or more fully, by ending the savage siege and other punishments.

The official story is that after Israel graciously handed Gaza over to the Palestinians, in the hope that they would construct a flourishing state, they revealed their true nature by subjecting Israel to unremitting rocket attack and forcing the captive population to become martyrs to so that Israel would be pictured in a bad light. Reality is rather different.

A few weeks after Israeli troops withdrew, leaving the occupation intact, Palestinians committed a major crime. In January 2006, they voted the wrong way in a carefully monitored free election, handing control of the Parliament to Hamas. The media constantly intone that Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In reality, its leaders have repeatedly made it clear and explicit that Hamas would accept a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus that has been blocked by the US and Israel for 40 years. In contrast, Israel is dedicated to the destruction of Palestine, apart from some occasional meaningless words, and is implementing that commitment.

True, Israel accepted the Road Map for reaching a two-state settlement initiated by President Bush and adopted by the Quartet that is to supervise it: the US, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia. But as he accepted the Road Map, Prime Minister Sharon at once added fourteen reservations that effectively nullify it. The facts were known to activists, but revealed to the general public for the first time in Jimmy Carter’s book “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.” They remain under wraps in media reporting and commentary.

The (unrevised) 1999 platform of Israel’s governing party, Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud, “flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.” And for those who like to obsess about meaningless charters, the core component of Likud, Menahem Begin’s Herut, has yet to abandon its founding doctrine that the territory on both sides of the Jordan is part of the Land of Israel.

The crime of the Palestinians in January 2006 was punished at once. The US and Israel, with Europe shamefully trailing behind, imposed harsh sanctions on the errant population and Israel stepped up its violence. By June, when the attacks sharply escalated, Israel had already fired more than 7700 [155 mm] shells at northern Gaza.

The US and Israel quickly initiated plans for a military coup to overthrow the elected government. When Hamas had the effrontery to foil the plans, the Israeli assaults and the siege became far more severe, justified by the claim that Hamas had taken over the Gaza Strip by force – which is not entirely false, though something rather crucial is omitted.

There should be no need to review again the horrendous record since. The relentless siege and savage attacks are punctuated by episodes of “mowing the lawn,” to borrow Israel’s cheery expression for its periodic exercises of shooting fish in a pond in what it calls a “war of defense.” Once the lawn is mowed and the desperate population seeks to reconstruct somehow from the devastation and the murders, there is a cease-fire agreement. These have been regularly observed by Hamas, as Israel concedes, until Israel violates them with renewed violence.

The most recent cease-fire was established after Israel’s October 2012 assault. Though Israel maintained its devastating siege, Hamas observed the cease-fire, as Israeli officials concede. Matters changed in June, when Fatah and Hamas forged a unity agreement, which established a new government of technocrats that had no Hamas participation and accepted all of the demands of the Quartet. Israel was naturally furious, even more so when even the US joined in signaling approval. The unity agreement not only undercuts Israel’s claim that it cannot negotiate with a divided Palestine, but also threatens the long term goal of dividing Gaza from the West Bank and pursuing its destructive policies in both of the regions.

Something had to be done, and an occasion arose shortly after, when the three Israeli boys were murdered in the West Bank. The Netanyahu government knew at once that they were dead, but pretended otherwise, which provided the opportunity to launch a rampage in the West Bank, targeting Hamas. Netanhayu claimed to have certain knowledge that Hamas was responsible. That too was a lie, as recognized early on. There has been no pretense of presenting evidence. One of Israel’s leading authorities on Hamas, Shlomi Eldar, reported almost at once that the killers very likely came from a dissident clan in Hebron that has long been a thorn in the side of Hamas. Eldar added that “I’m sure they didn’t get any green light from the leadership of Hamas, they just thought it was the right time to act.” The Israeli police have since been searching for two members of the clan, still claiming, without evidence, that they are “Hamas terrorists.”

The 18-day rampage however did succeed in undermining the feared unity government, and sharply increasing Israeli repression. According to Israeli military sources, Israeli soldiers arrested 419 Palestinians, including 335 affiliated with Hamas, and killed six Palestinians, also searching thousands of locations and confiscating $350,000. Israel also conducted dozens of attacks in Gaza, killing 5 Hamas members on July 7.

Hamas finally reacted with its first rockets in 19 months, Israeli officials reported, providing Israel with the pretext for Operation Protective Edge on July 8.

There has been ample reporting of the exploits of the self-declared Most Moral Army in the World, which should receive the Nobel Peace Prize according to Israel’s Ambassador to the US. By the end of July, some 1500 Palestinians had been killed, exceeding the toll of the Cast Lead crimes of 2008-9, 70% of them civilians including hundreds of women and children. And 3 civilians in Israel. Large areas of Gaza had been turned into rubble. During brief bombing pauses, relatives desperately seek shattered bodies or household items in the ruins of homes. The main power plant was attacked – not for the first time; this is an Israeli specialty — sharply curtailing the already very limited electricity and worse yet, reducing still further the minimal availability of fresh water. Another war crime. Meanwhile rescue teams and ambulances are repeatedly attacked. As atrocities mount throughout Gaza, Israel claims that its goal is to destroy tunnels at the border.

Four hospitals had been attacked, each yet another war crime. The first was the Al-Wafa Rehabilitation Hospital in Gaza City, attacked on the day the ground forces invaded the prison. A few lines in the New York Times, within a story about the ground invasion, reported that “most but not all of the 17 patients and 25 doctors and nurses were evacuated before the electricity was cut and heavy bombardments nearly destroyed the building, doctors said. `We evacuated them under fire,’ said Dr. Ali Abu Ryala, a hospital spokesman. `Nurses and doctors had to carry the patients on their backs, some of them falling off the stairway. There is an unprecedented state of panic in the hospital’.”

Three working hospitals were then attacked, patients and staff left to their own devices to survive. One Israeli crime did receive wide condemnation: the attack on a UN school that was harboring 3300 terrified refugees who had fled the ruins of their neighborhoods on the orders of the Israeli army. The outraged UNWRA Commission-General Pierre Kraehenbuehl said “I condemn in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces…. Today the world stands disgraced.” There were at least three Israeli strikes at the refugee shelter, a site well known to the Israeli army. “The precise location of the Jabalia Elementary Girls School and the fact that it was housing thousands of internally displaced people was communicated to the Israeli army seventeen times, to ensure its protection,” Kraehenbuehl said, “the last being at ten to nine last night, just hours before the fatal shelling.”

The attack was also condemned “in the strongest possible terms” by the normally reticent Secretary-General of the UN Ban Ki-moon. “Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children,” he said. There is no record that the US Ambassador to the UN “choked up as she spoke of infants who perished” in the Israeli strike – or in the attack on Gaza altogether.

But White House spokesperson Bernadette Meehan did respond. She said that “We are extremely concerned that thousands of internally displaced Palestinians who have been called on by the Israeli military to evacuate their homes are not safe in UN designated shelters in Gaza. We also condemn those responsible for hiding weapons in United Nations facilities in Gaza,” she added, omitting to mention that these facilities were empty and that the weapons were found by UNRWA, who had condemned those who hid them.

Later, the administration joined in stronger condemnations of this particular crime – while at the same time releasing more weapons to Israel. In doing so, however, Pentagon spokesman Steve Warren told reporters. “And it’s become clear that the Israelis need to do more to live up to their very high standards … for protecting civilian life” – the high standards it has been exhibiting for many years while using US arms, and again today.

Attacks on UN compounds sheltering refugees is another Israeli specialty. One famous incident is the Israeli bombardment of the clearly identified UN refugee shelter in Qana during Shimon Peres’s murderous Grapes of Wrath campaign, killing 106 Lebanese civilians who had taken refuge there, including 52 children. To be sure, Israel is not alone in this practice. Twenty years earlier, its South African ally had launched an airborne strike deep into Angola against Cassinga, a refugee camp run by the Namibian resistance SWAPO.

Israeli officials laud the humanity of the army, which even goes so far as to inform residents that their homes will be bombed. The practice is “sadism, sanctimoniously disguising itself as mercy,” in the words of Israeli journalist Amira Hass: “A recorded message demanding hundreds of thousands of people leave their already targeted homes, for another place, equally dangerous, 10 kilometers away.” In fact, no place in the prison is safe from Israeli sadism.

Some find it difficult to profit from Israel’s solicitude. An appeal to the world by the Gaza Catholic Church quotes a priest who explains the plight of residents of the House of Christ, a care home dedicated to looking after disabled children. They were removed to the Holy Family Church because Israel was targeting the area, but now, he writes, “The church of Gaza has received an order to evacuate. They will bomb the Zeitun area and the people are already fleeing. The problem is that the priest Fr George and the three nuns of Mother Teresa have 29 handicapped children and nine old ladies who can’t move. How will they manage to leave? If anyone can intercede with someone in power, and pray, please do it.”

Actually, it shouldn’t be difficult. Israel already provided the instructions at the Wafa Rehabilitation hospital. And fortunately, at least some states are interceding, as best they can. Five Latin American states — Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador and Peru – withdrew their ambassadors from Israel, following the course of Bolivia and Venezuela, which had broken relations in reaction to earlier Israeli crimes. These principled acts are another sign of the remarkable change in world relations as much of Latin America begins to free itself from western domination, sometimes providing a model of civilized behavior to those who controlled it for 500 years.

The hideous revelations elicited a different reaction from the Most Moral President in the World, the usual one: great sympathy for Israelis, bitter condemnation of Hamas, and calls for moderation by both sides. In his August 1 press conference, he did express concern for Palestinians “caught in the crossfire” (where?) while again vigorously supporting the right of Israel to defend itself, like everyone. Not quite everyone. Not of course Palestinians. They have no right to defend themselves, surely not when Israel is on good behavior, keeping to the norm of quiet-for-quiet: stealing their land, driving them out of their homes, subjecting them to a savage siege, and regularly attacking them with weapons provided by their protector.

Palestinians are like black Africans, the Namibian refugees in the Cassinga camp for example, all terrorists for whom the right of defense does not exist.

A 72-hour humanitarian truce was supposed to go into effect at 8am on August 1. It broke down almost at once. As I write, a few hours later, there are conflicting accounts and a good deal remains unclear. According to a press release of the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza, which has a solid reputation for reliability, one of its field workers in Rafah, at the Egyptian border in the south, heard Israeli artillery firing at about 8:05am. By about 9:30am, after reports that an Israeli soldier had been captured, intensive air and artillery bombing of Rafah was underway, killing probably dozens of people and injuring hundreds who had returned to their homes after the ceasefire entered into effect, though numbers could not yet be verified.

The day before, on July 31, the Coastal Water Utility, the sole provider of water in the Gaza Strip, announced that it could no longer provide water or sanitation services because of lack of fuel and frequent attacks on personnel. Al Mezan reports that by then, “almost all primary health services have stopped in the Gaza Strip due to the lack of water, garbage collection and environment health services. UNRWA had also warned about the risk of imminent spreading of disease owing to the halt of water and sanitation services.” Meanwhile, on the eve of the cease-fire, Israeli missiles fired from aircraft continued to kill and wound victims throughout the region.

When the current episode of sadism is finally called off, whenever that will be, Israel hopes to be free to pursue its criminal policies in the occupied territories without interference, and with the US support it has enjoyed in the past: military, economic, and diplomatic; and also ideological, by framing the issues in conformity to Israeli doctrines. Gazans will be free to return to the norm in their Israeli-run prison, while in the West Bank they can watch in peace as Israel dismantles what remains of their possessions.

That is the likely outcome if the US maintains its decisive and virtually unilateral support for Israeli crimes and its rejection of the longstanding international consensus on diplomatic settlement. But the future will be quite different if the US withdraws that support. In that case it would be possible to move towards the “enduring solution” in Gaza that Secretary of State Kerry called for, eliciting hysterical condemnation in Israel because the phrase could be interpreted as calling for an end to Israel’s siege and regular attacks. And – horror of horrors – the phrase might even be interpreted as calling for implementation of international law in the rest of the occupied territories.

It is not that Israel’s security would be threatened by adherence to international law; it would very likely be enhanced. But as explained 40 years ago by Israeli general Ezer Weizman, later president, Israel could then not “exist according to the scale, spirit, and quality she now embodies.”

*edited to remove a silly sentence.

[Searcher08]

There was a time when the BBC was much more even handed than it is now.

Really?

When was that?

Late 1960s

Reporters like John Simpson, Jeremy Bowen and Martin Bell?

[seemslikeadream]

Google removes 'Bomb Gaza' game from app store
An 'absolutely disgusting' computer game which 'glorifies the horror and violence of the bombing of Gaza' has been removed from Google's Play store after a storm of criticism

By Matthew Sparkes, Deputy Head of Technology11:11AM BST 05 Aug 2014 Comments15 Comments
Google has been forced to remove a game called Bomb Gaza after facing angry criticism from the public. The game's logo included an F16 fighter jet, as used by Israel's military, and the description told users that they must "drop bombs and avoid killing civilians".
The Android game was added to the Play store on July 29 and had been downloaded between 500 and 1,000 times. But the software has now been removed from the store and is no longer available to download.
One Google user who had commented on Bomb Gaza's description said: "To think that you can turn genocide, murder and ethnic cleansing into a game is absolutely disgusting", while another said it was "utterly shameful".
A third user added: "My beloved brothers and sisters are dying in Gaza and some stupid ignoramus decides to make a game like this."
Chris Doyle, the director of The Council for Arab-British Understanding, said that such games were in “very, very poor taste”.

“These games glorify the horror and violence of the bombing of Gaza, sanitising for a younger generation what is a dreadful conflict that has killed thousands and decimated the lives of hundreds of thousands. It raises serious questions of Google’s ethical standards if these games remain hosted on its platforms,” he said.
“Any war games that are clearly designed to support the continuation of a conflict like this in such a very delicate environment are really dangerous. We’ve seen huge amounts of hate language and bigotry over the past few weeks. It’s the last sort of things that’s needed: anything that somehow sanitises violence
“It merely serves to propagandise young people, it normalises it. It clearly has a political purpose.
“You can have video games that deal with war, but when you base it in a reality of a conflict that’ going on right now it’s extremely problematic. It’s in very, very poor taste and it doesn’t create a culture of peace - and we need to, more than ever before.”

[bluenoseclaret]

Israeli official calls for concentration camps in Gaza and 'the conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters'

Moshe Feiglin is Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset
He posted the message on his Facebook page at the weekend
Plan includes shipping the people living in Gaza across the world
IDF would 'exterminate nests of resistance' as part of his plan
The Gaza war has left more than 1,800 Palestinians dead

By Jill Reilly

An Israeli official has called for concentration camps in Gaza and ‘the conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters’.
Moshe Feiglin, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, posted the inflammatory message on his Facebook page at the weekend.
He lays out a detailed plan for the destruction of Gaza - which includes shipping its residents across the world - in a letter he addressed to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The message, which received more than 2,000 likes on his page, lists four action points which he wants to be enforced as soon as possible.
Feiglin details the first one as 'defining the enemy' and states: 'The strategic enemy is extremist Arab Islam in all its varieties, from Iran to Gaza, which seeks to annihilate Israel in its entirety. The immediate enemy is Hamas. (Not the tunnels, not the rockets, but Hamas.)'
He says another important part of his plan is the 'conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters.'

The Gaza war, now in its fourth week, has left more than 1,800 Palestinians dead.
Feiglin details how he wants the Israeli PM 'to turn Gaza into Jaffa, a flourishing Israeli city with a minimum number of hostile civilians.'
In 1948 Jaffa was a Palestinian town but there was an exodus of most of its Arab population when it fell to the fledgling Israeli army and right-wing Jewish militias.

In the letter he expresses his desire for the IDF to find areas on the Sinai border to establish 'tent encampments...until relevant emigration destinations are determined.'
He says that the supply of electricity and water to the Gaza would be disconnected before being 'shelled with maximum fire power.'

Feiglin explains how the IDF would then 'exterminate nests of resistance, in the event that any should remain.'
Establish 'tent encampments...until relevant emigration destinations are determined'
Part of his plan includes shipping the people living in Gaza across the world.
He says to encourage the movement those who willingly agree to emigrate will be given 'a generous economic support package.'
But those who resist leaving their home will be required to publicly sign a declaration of loyalty to Israel, and receive a blue ID card similar to that of the Arabs of East Jerusalem.
Then Israeli law will be extended to cover the entire Gaza Strip and 'the city of Gaza and its suburbs will be rebuilt as true Israeli touristic and commercial cities.' ......

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... rters.html

Comments: 1260

[stefano]

Frank Luntz's Hasbara handbook, mentioned in this thread, is available here (PDF). All the points and even the language show up online all the time. It's excellent on the use of propaganda, well worth a read (116 pages but not very dense), and contains some interesting poll results. There ought to be an anti-occupation text like it.

[American Dream]

Frank Luntz's Hasbara handbook, mentioned in this thread, is available here (PDF). All the points and even the language show up online all the time. It's excellent on the use of propaganda, well worth a read (116 pages but not very dense), and contains some interesting poll results. There ought to be an anti-occupation text like it.

There is a left wing parallel in the Center for Story-based Strategy. I don't think it would be ethical to use all the methods of corporate/governmental style PR in a balls-to-the-wall kind of way, but they hew a good line and keep their approach ethical.

[Searcher08]

Frank Luntz's Hasbara handbook, mentioned in this thread, is available here (PDF). All the points and even the language show up online all the time. It's excellent on the use of propaganda, well worth a read (116 pages but not very dense), and contains some interesting poll results. There ought to be an anti-occupation text like it.

Cheers for that, stefano
A manual on state-of-the-art manipulation techniques. I felt I wanted a shower after reading it. Yuck!

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/focus-forgiveness/201309/are-you-being-influenced-or-manipulated

the difference between influence and manipulation... I checked these words out in the dictionary and actually they are pretty close in definition. They both involve “producing an effect in another person without apparent exertion of force.”

But manipulation is defined as “having control over others by having the ability to influence their behavior (emotions) and their actions so things can go in the manipulator’s favor” and “to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage.” In my experience, a manipulator tends to play on others’ fears, greed (a form of fear) or guilt. Those being manipulated feel pressured, trapped, or angry.

In contrast, the word influence has an ancient root in the Middle English word for “emanation of the stars.” Definitions include “the emanation of moral or spiritual force.” People who are influential tend to be charismatic and admirable. We are inspired by them and aspire to be like them. We feel good around them. (Of course, not all influences are good, but have you noticed that we need to say “bad” influence to clarify a negative effect, but we never have to add “bad” to manipulation?)

When I think of manipulation, I think of someone who cares only about his own needs, a person who puts his self-interest above that of others. For instance, toddlers, who are naturally self-centered and convinced of their own omnipotence, can be excellent manipulators. They’re savvy enough to have figured out Mom or Dad’s hot buttons and they’ll push those buttons relentlessly to get exactly what they want.

Many adults grow out of this type of manipulation – but some don’t. A family member of mine admits that she uses her emotionality to bend others to her will. She simply hasn’t figured out alternative ways (that would be more pleasant for her and all the rest of us!) to get what she wants.

Compared to manipulation, influence has a more positive connotation that takes into consideration others’ needs and desires. As parents, we want to influence our kids to be healthy and safe. As friends, we want to influence our friends to happy and fulfilled. As business owners, we want to influence our clients to be successful and prosperous. We want what is best for those in our “sphere of influence.”

Influence has many components. It’s based on strong rapport, clear and congruent communication, and awareness and understanding of others. We all naturally have these basic abilities to some extent. But like all skills, we can learn to be better.

[elfismiles]

I wasn't able to attend the recent (August 2nd) "Texas Stands with Gaza" rally at the Cap building but I just heard Alex Jones say that he was downtown and attempted to take photos of the protests but that his cellphone wouldn't work and neither would those of his associates. He concluded that APD was test-bedding the kind of cellphone suppressor tech we've heard about the past couple of years like this:

Apple patent could remotely disable protesters' phone cameras
Summary: A new patent, granted to Apple, could prevent academic cheating, cinema interruptions, but also see areas of political protest activity 'ring-fenced' disabling phone and tablet cameras.
By Zack Whittaker for Zero Day | September 4, 2012
http://www.zdnet.com/apple-patent-could ... 000003640/

... yet there are a decent number of cellphone pics of the event ...

https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm ... gws_rd=ssl

[smiths]

Let’s consider a sentence. The sentence is: “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

What does this mean, exactly?

If you’ve been paying attention to the news lately, or if you are familiar with the Israel-Palestine conflict, you’ll have encountered this proposition hundreds if not thousands of times. It is continually affirmed by Israeli officials, US officials, EU officials, security analysts, political correspondents, columnists, people who express solidarity with Israel, even people who express solidarity with the Palestinians in the face of attacks by the Israel Defence Forces and who oppose Israel’s occupation and annexation of Palestinian land.

Plenty of people dispute the validity of the proposition. In certain contexts they see it as an excuse for the pursuit of a colonial logic on the part of the State of Israel. They may well be justified in doing so. But I am not concerned with the proposition’s validity, but what it actually means.

What does ‘Israel’ mean in this sentence? Does it mean the State of Israel? If so, we can expand the sentence to say ‘The State of Israel has a right to defend the State of Israel’. Such a meaning contains the tacit proposition that states have rights. Do they? Let us recall how the State of Israel was established: people simply declared (after killing lots of Palestinians and driving hundreds of thousands of them from their homes, but this is not especially important for the purpose of this exercise) that it was established, and others accepted that it had been established. That is, they said: there is this thing, and it exists. How can such a thing –which is an imaginary relation, albeit one sustained by lots of weapons- have rights? How can a thing, as opposed to a person or indeed an animal, have rights?

Perhaps ‘Israel’ does not mean the State of Israel in this case at all. Perhaps ‘Israel’ is the name for the people of Israel. In which case: the people of Israel have a right to defend the people of Israel. If this is so, who is ‘the people’ in question? Is it Israeli Jews? Is it Israeli Jews and Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship? Or, given that the Jewish State exists to open the gates of open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew, does it mean every Jew in the world? And does it exclude Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship? Does this sentence actually mean “All Jews in the world have a right to defend themselves?” It could, I suppose, but it wouldn’t make a great deal of sense in any of the particular contexts in which the sentence is normally uttered.

So either: a) things have rights, and a thing has a right to defend itself; b) people (whoever these people might be) have a right to defend themselves;

or…what else?

Perhaps the only way this sentence can be otherwise made intelligible is to assume that ‘Israel’ in this case is a composite entity: the name, at once, of both the people (whoever these people might be) and the State. Or, in other words, the State is the same thing as the people.

Clear?

To tell you the truth, I have no idea what it really means. I am guessing that it is not supposed to be fully coherent. All I know is that it is continually repeated. A lot. With a great deal of assuredness. And a lot of people think it makes sense, and they preface their remarks with it, and then they go on to justify the slaughter of Palestinians.

Now, compare the number of times you have heard the phrase “Israel has a right to defend itself” to the number of times you have heard the phrase “Palestinians have a right to defend themselves”, or “The Palestinian people have a right to defend themselves”. If you’re like me, you’ll probably never once have heard the phrase “Palestine has a right to defend itself”.
Now why is that? Why does it appear as incontrovertibly true that “Israel has a right to defend itself”, and yet as regards Palestinians, the Palestinian people, Palestine…there’s nothing? Do you know what that means?

http://hiredknaves.wordpress.com/2014/0 ... self-mean/

[8bitagent]

So why isn't Obama crying and outraged over Gazans being killed like he is the Yazidis and Kurds?

[Wombaticus Rex]

So why isn't Obama crying and outraged over Gazans being killed like he is the Yazidis and Kurds?

Are you doing that thing where you attribute agency to a paid actor again?

[Nordic]

So there's some seriously nasty shit going down in Israel right now. "Settlers" and other Israelis just running around shooting Palestinian kids, 12, 13, 15 years old, letting them bleed to death in front of them, while videotaping them and shouting insults at them.

It's being said that the Zionists are planting knifes on them and accusing them of trying to stab Israelis. They shot a woman the other day, a 30 year old woman, whose "knife" turned out to be a pair of sunglasses. They just gunned her down on the street. It's also videotaped. Snuff videos, no need to hunt for them anymore, no more underground black market shit, you can see snuff videos on your phone now, all the time.

Anyway, it seems like it's something we should be talking about here. It makes me so angry my head might explode.

Here's a list of those murdered in cold blood since October 1st. There are over 1,000 injured.



15 year old girl shot while walking home from school with friends:



From the "Freedom for Gaza" facebook page:

I'm sure you have seen the video of the 14-year-old boy who was MURDERED by Israel today. If you haven't seen the video, scroll down this page and you will find it. That video was posted on an Israeli Facebook page and a Palestinian activist took a screen shot of some of the comments and posted them. These comments were made on that video by Zionist Jews. To see how truly EVIL these people are...read these comments. These are God's Chosen People. What kind of a person could watch that video and make comments like this?!?!

This 15-year-old girl was EXECUTED by Israel today. A mob of Jewish settlers were chasing her...taunting her...trying to pull her hijab off. She was frightening! She was petrified! The moment she crossed the road, an Israeli policeman jumped out of nowhere and fired five shots point blank into her body. She was surrounded by soldiers and policemen with their guns pointed at her....settlers screaming at her...as she slowly bled to death. Watch the video in the comment below.

This man lost his wife and his little girl when the Zionazis bombed his home for the sheer rollicking hell of it:



This is a video of a 13 year old boy lying broken and bleeding and dying in the street while whoever is videotaping him dying is shouting at him (along with many others).

Don't watch this one if you have kids, or if you're remotely sensitive. Of course I am both of those things and I could only watch it for a couple of seconds and it fucked me up for the rest of the day.

https://www.facebook.com/abuyousuf.zida ... 511308640/

Here's a Palestinian journalist screaming as he gets shot:



It just goes on and on. The police and the IDF have declared open season on Palestinians and are letting those subhuman "settlers" (I really wish they'd quit using that word, they settle nothing -- they are disrupters, thieves, bullies, terrorists and murderers) just run amok and shoot and kill whoever they feel like.

It's one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen.

Anyway it seems that this should be on our radar.

[backtoiam]

I watched em shoot a lady in a burka two days ago. She was begging for her life. They shot her down like a dog. Under a parking garage.

[backtoiam]

There is some is seriously bad shit going on over there right now.