Gingerwaster

A recipe for resentment

gingerwaster’s comment 27 May 09, 11:33am

Well it’s pretty obvious what the settler lobby, led by Lieberman, is up to today : it is an orchestrated campaign to destabilize and de-legitimize Israel’s Arab citizens.

The latest moves : demanding Israeli Palestinians swear an oath of loyalty to the “Jewish state”, this new recognition demand in negotiations with the non-citizens in the territories and the current attempt to pass a law to make it a crime to celebrate the Nabqa – have some pretty alarming historical connotations for Jews.

What’s the next move : issuing mandatory yellow stars to Israeli Palestinians ? Putting them under curfew ? Making them inelegible for certain jobs ? “Re-grouping” them in certain areas, to prepare them for “transfer” to camps in the “territories” ?

I hope Israelis – and their supporters here in the West – reflect carefully on the precedents that are being set today and on what is becoming more and more obvious : the deliberate provocations of the settler lobby have one aim – to create a rifts between Israeli Arabs and Israeli jews, with the longer-term goal of ensuring that this “enemy within” is transferred out of the country. Lieberman has made no secret about this policy.

The other thing they need to carefully think about is the kind of society Israel is in danger of becoming in the next few years : an apartheid state run by extremists with a core ethos based on racial purity.

Avigdor Lieberman as the current representative of Israel in front of the world, is exactly this. Israelis might just as well have voted for Barusch Goldstein as their Prime Minister.

Diaspora Jews find their voice

gingerwaster’s comment 21 May 09, 9:28am

The tipping point ?

The tipping point when diaspora Jews start really challenging the Israeli leadership’s settlement agenda will doubtless come, but perhaps not so rapidly as this article suggests. Views are entrenched, people have been brought up with monochrome narratives and the mentality that they are supporters of a “side” that has forever been under existential threat, that it’s the “other side” (lumped together and subjected to a barrage of disparagement and demonization, with at times pretty racist connotations) that is to blame for all the problems.

It will take more than a few words for all of this to change. There is a constant campaign of “fear up” among the diaspora to maintain the status quo. The slightest incident is blown out of all proportion and used to fan the flames. And the fear of being ostracized by the community or placed on the S.H.I.T list – a modern-day version of the yellow star – is a powerful force to keep those who question that status quo quiet.

The settlement lobby is alive and well, both in Israel and among the diaspora and they will not simply vanish or down tools and go back to gardening – many have devoted their entire lives to this “cause”. Although many activists and non-activists now do not like the way things are going, few are ready, for the moment, to make an issue of it. Most hide their heads in the sand, look the other way, stick their fingers in their ears, fall back on a few tried and tested mantras. A feeling of fatalism is predominant.

The fact is that the present Israeli leadership is not very different from its predecessors – it is obsessed with one goal : to complete the Judea/Samaria colonization and Palestinian dispossession agenda initiated in the euphoric days after the 1967 war – all other considerations are secondary. Israel is still a nation in the construction phase and like a charging bull, is pursuing its target with a blind disregard for the consequences. Where previous governments constantly lied about what they were up to or put up smoke screens and feel-good soundbytes for the benefit of their Western allies, the current one, which, let’s face it, is representative of the strongest political forces in Israel and in the diaspora at the present time, is promoting that policy with little regard for the “sensibilities” of the rest of the world. This is a good thing in many ways, though not for present-day Palestinians. At least the cards are on the table now and the lines have been drawn in the sand.

The tipping point will likely come in 3 to 5 year’s time, when the full consequences of this stubborn nation-building policy finally become a reality – when it will no longer be possible to deny the fact that what emerges from this confusing mess is a fully-fledged apartheid system in which Palestinians are denied any basic rights and have become impoverished, stateless gypsies on their own fragmented, shrunken, resourceless lands.

At that point, it will be far harder to play the ostrich or the three monkeys – the total injustice of the situation will be apparent even to those who prefer to close their eyes and up the volume of the music today. Internationally, Israel’s position will become more and more difficult to defend, regardless of the amount of propaganda from the Hasbara brigade. Financial and military support from the West will weaken, seriously impacting the economy. The diaspora will find it increasingly hard to defend Israel from its critics and will turn away.

Moreover, the consequences within Israel proper could be enormous. The Arab community, who make up 20% of the Israeli population, will become further disenfranchised, unrest and protests will grow as will the inevitable corollary – repression amid growing suspicion and hostility between communities. Some may resort to terrorism in support of their impoverished relatives in the human zoo that the West Bank and Gaza will have become. This will radicalize positions within the country, no doubt spawning a strong current of protest within the Jewish community itself, leading to a further increase of repression and counter protest. The situation will spiral, there will be much bloodshed and Israel’s position will become untenable. Many jews with ties in Europe or America will up sticks, fed up with the insecurity as well as the increasingly difficult economic situation.

It’s not easy to try to imagine what the end result of this process will be – but if we look at historical precedent, South Africa is probably a good model.

Some of the promoters of this policy, including the neoconservative/Zionist nexus mentioned in the article, are aware of these dangers, but think that they can head them off in typical neoconservative apprentice-sorcerer style – by upping the ante on Iran, promoting an ersatz “war of civilizations”, pushing for a regional war to kick over the anthills. If they are allowed to have their way, all bets are off on Israel’s future.

Obama and Netanyahu: Pressing the right buttons

gingerwaster’s comment 16 May 09, 7:45pm

Bighunk1

It is written that there will be no peace until the Messiah comes,

Don’t mess with the Messiah…

If America would keep their nose out of the Middle east Israel
would probably solve their problems,

I totally agree, you big hunk. The US must immediately stop funding Israel, provide no more military hardware and stop supporting Israel’s case in the UN. Problem solved – Israel would be forced to give Palestinians a state and make peace with its neighbours….

if Israel loses American support im sure between the worlds Jews and the Fundimental Christains they would get by nicely.

Of course – but only until the coming Armageddon in 2012. The Christian fundamentalists will then be raptured up to the sky, with ‘quiring angels around them singing, performing on Harps of Gold, while the Jews would stay below and have to fight the Last Battle alone. Then Christ would come down and the Jews would have to convert – or die. 2 thirds of the Jews would be massacred. Judaism as a religion would disappear. The Holocaust would be finally fulfilled. So say Fundamentalist Christians. With friends like these….

The land was givin to the Jews people get over it.

Nope. The Israelites invaded the land of milk and honey (but devoid of oil and water), and exterminated the local peoples (Caananites, Amalakites, etc..)

Maybe we should give it back to its original owners ? Any Amalakites blogging on CIF ? .

Bethlehem is silently strangled

gingerwaster’s comment 10 May 09, 3:38am

Petra

Not that gloomy – just fed up with this constant loggerheads and the blockheaded, navel-gazing politicians who can’t see beyond the rims of their spectacles. I’d be interested to hear what your scenario for the future would be, given the current situation ?

That skit you linked to was amusing, though it sure doesn’t flatter Hillary Clinton. I really would love to be a fly on the wall in one of those meetings between Lieberman and European politicians. Here’s a guy sitting in front of them and they’re telling him he must freeze the settlements and cut a deal with the Palestinians, and the man they’re talking to is a goddam settler himself who wants to drown Palestinians in the Dead Sea by the truckload and transfer the rest to another country. I can imagine the uncomfortable coughs, the crossing and uncrossing of legs, the sideways glances….Netanyahou really did pick a prime candidate for his diplomatic effort, didn’t he ? What next : Rabbi Obadiah as emissary to Muslim religious leaders and the minister who’s a former Kahanist to lead Israel’s Human Rights delegation at the UN ?

It all sounds like a corny joke – in fact reality beats fiction hands down every time !

Bethlehem is silently strangled

gingerwaster’s comment 08 May 09, 3:01pm

Excellent article Seth.

At least today the picture is clear : we have an extreme right-wing settler government in power in Israel. It is intent of finishing the construction of its apartheid system in the territories at whatever cost. Most Israelis seem, for the moment at least, to be turning a blind eye, pretending to themselves it isn’t happening or hoping the “Palestinian problem” will simply fade away by magic. It won’t last long – the settlement juggernaut, with its blindfolded driver, is careering faster and faster towards the wall on which its dream of an ethnically pure state will be shattered.

Many of their supporters in the blogosphere are becoming shriller by the minute, denying the evidence, demonizing the victims, sounding more and more like the South African defenders of apartheid of old as each day passes.

The same accusations that were levelled at those denouncing apartheid are here in evidence : “nigger-lover”, “terrorist sympathizer”, etc etc…the parallels are all too familiar.

It seems that the only way out of this mess is for the abcess to ripen and burst. Repression against dissidents within Israel is on the rise and is certain to get worse and worse – it is doubtful that Seth and other courageous individuals like him will be allowed to continue for much longer, no doubt to the relief of those here who would love to see him gagged and the cries of the victims muffled

There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed, a lot of pain and suffering in the process, but all other routes appear to have been closed today. It seems that we have to go through with this catharsis for Israelis and their supporters to wake up from their sleep-walking nightmare and oust the settlement lobby from power once and for all. And for our lily-livered Western politicians to realize that they cannot continue to support a governing elite still operating with a 19th century colonial project.

I’m doubtful anyone – even the new US administration – can do anything to change the equation now. The lines have been drawn in the sand, the knives have been sharpened, the crash has been programmed and is waiting to happen. It will take a long time to pick up the pieces. What a goddamn mess.

A suffocating consensus of self-congratulation

gingerwaster’s comment 01 Feb 09, 10:46am

HymieGoldberg

Did I even mention Hamas ? No I didn’t, but it seems that the only argument left for you jingoists nowadays is Hamas. Hamas here, Hamas there, Hamas here there and everywhere.

Point out that israel is building more settlements in the West Bank as we speak ?

Hamas.

Say that using white phosphorus against civilians is a war crime ?

Hamas.

Ask for Israel to live up to it’s obligatons under international law ?

Hamas.

Point out that Palestinians have only a fifth of the water allocation that Jewish settlers have in the West bank ?

Hamas.

It all boils down to Hamas. What would you do without Hamas ? What argument would you use if Hamas disappeared tomorrow ?

Hamas is the excuse that helps you assuage your conscience and close your eyes and ears to the bloody massacre that the army you defend has just perpetrated – for the nth time. It helps you shut out the crimes the government you support is perpetrating by stealing the little resources and land the Palestinians still have and totally destroying their future.

Because what is Hamas, some gigantic, evil monster that is threatening to destroy Israel ?

No, it’s a bunch of ragged and very poorly armed fighters desperate to appear that they still have some sort of power left, when the truth is, as we have just seen, that they don’t stand a cat’s chance in hell. Long on rhetoric, but no resources, no money, no tanks, no artillery, no air force, no navy, no economy – exactly the opposite of israel. They are not a threat to Israel in any conceivable scenario – but they are the perfect excuse to maintain the boot on the Palestinian neck, to regularly indulge in blood baths and to refuse to make peace, so that the settlement juggernaut can finish it’s colonial job and exclude Palestinians from their land for ever.

You tell me it was sad what happened to all those innocent children ? I bet you cry about it at night. I bet your pillow’s wet with tears mate.

You remind me of a South African I met when I was in London so many years ago. He said that he had more pity and sympathy for the lions than he had for the keffirs.

Put Hamas aside for a minute – they haven’t been around that long. This conflict started way before Hamas were around. The latest phase started when Israel started building settlements on the 22% of historic Palestine that Palestinians had been left with after the 67 war. Those settlements happened to be on the best lands and all the acquifers. There were 0 settlers in 68, about 550 000 today and counting. And still there are more pouring in and still the building is continuing – and none of this has anything to do with Hamas – except that it is precisely this policy that has given rise to it’s extremist ideology. .

What the country you support is doing is perpetrating a classic colonial policy designed to exclude the native population from their heritage – and all the scarecrows you want to conjure up to provide a smokescreen for this injustice won’t change the reality.

I actually don’t give two hoots what you may or may not believe, because it’s irrelevant. People who get their ideas from propaganda manuals and are unable to think for themselves are irrelevant. They are the cannon fodder and the chaff of history – be they jihadists, stalinists, colonialists, racial supremacists, my country-right-or-wrongers – they are the fools that swallow whatever is fed to them by those in power.

History isn’t kind to such people. Where are the white South African jingoists today ? The ones who demonized the black population just as you demonize the Palestinians today ? Gone.

If you still have the capacity to think straight, under the layers of ideological programming that have blinded you and make you feel that you are somehow still a “good” person, open your eyes a bit, read the study of the bunker mentality I posted above, read the revelations in haaretz about the settlement programme and how the government you support has been lying through its teeth for decades.

And if you still support that, then there’s no point in continuing a discussion with you, because you have abandoned your humanity for the comfort of the tribe and the hatred of the “stranger”. that Primo Levi describes so vividly in “If it were a man”.

ndiscriminate slaughter from the air is a barbarism that must be abolished

gingerwaster’s comment 18 Jan 09, 1:02pm

The Israeli military regularly destroy their neighbour’s infrastructure – in particular those neighbours whose lands or resources they would like to take or keep – and we Europeans pay for the damage, rebuild the infrastructure, heal the wounded.

It has happened time and time again – the Israeli State razes some country to the ground, European taxpayers step in and foot the reconstruction bill, while US taxpayer pay for the guns and bombs they use to do the damage. And the entire cycle repeats itself ad infinitum.

Like a spoilt, pathological child, the Israeli military smashes the neighbour’s kid’s toys with the hammer he got as a present from Uncle Sam, steals their things and beats them up, and Daddy Europe steps in right afterwards to pay for the damage and excuse his child’s bullying, on the grounds that he can’t help it because he has suffered such deep traumas when he was young. Then they give the cantankerous child a big lollipop to calm his temper.

And woe betide anyone who dares to give him a slap on the wrists for his outrageous behaviour – immediately, Uncle Sam and daddy Europe step in with the knuckle dusters and the baseball bats.

We Westerners are funding and encouraging the Israeli state’s abuses – without us, they would be powerless and obliged to make peace with their neighbours.

One day, Uncle Sam and Daddy Europe will end up ruined and unable or unwilling to pay, while the neighbour’s kid’s parents will pick up the knuckle dusters and the baseball bats. On that day, the spoilt child will need to hide in the deepest recesses of his bunker, because it will be payback time.

Indiscriminate slaughter from the air is a barbarism that must be abolished

gingerwaster’s comment 17 Jan 09, 3:11pm

Budiccai

Yes you’re right, the Bush years symbolized the final pangs of US supremacist hubris. The attempts to bomb the world back into line, the open abandoning of the moral principles on which their Constitution was based (which remained largely symbolic in practical terms), the rise of apocalyptic ideology among the people most under threat, the sole reliance on military power to stem the tide, the harking back to the ideology of the forefathers and to a golden past that never was, the cynical greed and corruption of its ruling classes, emptying the state coffers to fill their own pockets – all these are the typical symptoms of an Empire that has reached its zenith and is on the path to decline, but hasn’t yet accepted the consequences and is afraid of the future. A very similar process took place during the waning years of the British Empire.

Bush left us one final parting gift, which symbolizes very much what his Presidency was all about : the green light for the Zionist pit-bull to go ahead and do their worst during the last days of his reign. He couldn’t give them Iran, so he gave them Gaza instead. Now he’s walked off the stage with the loot, having made multi-millionaires out of his clan and associates on the backs of the American people and the rest of the world, leaving us all a legacy whose poisonous repercussions will haunt us for years to come.

Indiscriminate slaughter from the air is a barbarism that must be abolished

gingerwaster’s comment 17 Jan 09, 3:56am

‘We are creating suicide bombers from the sons of the dead’

* Chris McGreal in Tel Aviv
* The Guardian, Saturday 17 January 2009

The call came at 11pm on a Saturday. Yitzchak Ben Mocha’s mobile flashed up “unidentified number” but he knew who it was. A recorded voice ordered him to report for duty at eight the next morning. As he packed his uniform he wondered if he was heading to prison. The 25-year-old paratrooper was about to tell his commanders that not only would he refuse to join Israel’s war in Gaza but would not serve in any capacity that helped perpetuate the conflict.

He reported for duty and was ordered to erect tents for combat soldiers.

“I told my officer, I am not going to do this. The next morning I was sent home. They told me they’d call me again if there was need. They have not called yet. In the past the army used to put refuseniks in jail for weeks. When they were released, sometimes they would be arrested again and this would go on for months.

“But now it seems the army doesn’t want to admit publicly there are refuseniks. [It] is embarrassed. It would go against the image of the whole army and country united behind this war.”

The Israeli military has told the press there is so much support for the assault on Gaza that more soldiers have turned up to fight than have been called up for what the local media is characterising as a “righteous war”. Ben Mocha says that obscures the increasing number of Israeli men of fighting age, almost all of whom are military reservists, who are refusing to serve the occupation.

One resisters’ organisation, Courage to Refuse, published a newspaper advert condemning the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians and calling on soldiers to refuse to fight in Gaza. “The brutal, unprecedented violence in Gaza is shocking. The false hope that this kind of violence will bring security to Israelis is all the more dangerous. We cannot stand aside while hundreds of civilians are being butchered by the IDF [Israel Defence Force],” it said.

But it is not clear how many have refused to go to Gaza, because the army is sending people home, quietly. So far, only one reservist has been jailed for refusing to fight. No’em Levna, a first lieutenant in the Israeli army, was sent to a military prison for 14 days. “Killing innocent civilians cannot be justified,” he said. “Nothing justifies this kind of killing. It is Israeli arrogance based on logic. It’s saying, ‘if we hit more, everything will be okay’. But the hatred and anger we are planting in Gaza will rebound on us.”

Ben Mocha is hardly a pacifist or anti-Israeli. He grew up in a Jewish orthodox family, attended a religious school, and served full-time in one of Israel’s elite combat parachute units.

He says he joined the Israeli army believing he would be fighting “terror organisations”. He found himself suppressing Palestinian aspirations for freedom and putting down protests of Palestinian farmers “against the incontinent theft of their lands”. He also saw abuses, such as Israeli troops sending Palestinian women and children into houses to ensure they were not booby-trapped, and using civilians as human shields.

“I am not a pacifist. I recognise the necessity of Israel to have a strong defensive army but I’m no longer going to play a part in 40 years of occupation. I told the army I will report for training so that I can always be ready to defend Israel, but attacking Gaza and perpetuating occupation is not defending Israel.”

That is not a popular view in a country where worship of the military begins in school and many political leaders are former generals. But the war is likely to strengthen the resisters once Israelis can reflect on the scale of the killing.

(…/…) recently the military has preferred to pretend simply that dissenters don’t exist – as hundreds of soldiers and reservists signed petitions refusing to enforce the occupation.

The government was particularly embarrassed when 27 pilots said they would no longer carry out killings of Palestinian leaders in Gaza, and when a group of elite commandos refused to serve in the occupied territories.

Still that remains a minority view. “Some of my comrades from the army don’t like what I’m thinking. Some said they don’t agree but they support my right to say it. But now, with the war, they say I’m giving my unit a bad reputation,” said Ben Mocha.

He is disturbed that most of the Israeli public and much of the media is blind to the fact that hundreds of Palestinians have been cut to pieces by Israeli fire power. “In the long run, it’s not a war of defence. We are creating a thousand suicide bombers for the future from the brothers of the dead, the sons of the dead … in the long term, we are creating more terror. You can’t separate the war in Gaza from the fact that the Palestinian nation is under occupation for more than 40 years. I’m not justifying Hamas firing rockets but we Israelis should first look at what we are doing.”

Indiscriminate slaughter from the air is a barbarism that must be abolished

gingerwaster’s comment 17 Jan 09, 3:28am

Scruffy

Kagan’s semi-philosophical account omits the prime causes of the difference between the mentality of Europeans on one hand and Americans and Israelis on the other : history. That’s quite logical – Kagan is a partisan and interprets events through his partisan lens.

During their nation-building phase, which lasted several centuries, Europeans have experienced a long and particularly bloody history, in which competing religious and nationalist ideologies, and the underlying struggles for land, power and resources, have caused millions of needless deaths and widespread destruction. This culminated last century in two world wars that effectively leveled most of Europe’s cities and towns and resulted in some of the worst horrors the world has ever experienced.

We came out of WWII with a deeply scarred mistrust of nationalist, racist and religious supremacist ideologies and with a leitmotif that is now embedded in our DNA : “Never again”. This was one of the main drivers for the construction of the European Union.

The supremacist ideologies of “God and Country” that swept through Europe and led to the centuries of colonial oppression and culminated in the Holocaust have been uprooted. We really cringe when we hear other peoples evoking them, except in the context of national liberation struggles, because we know exactly what horrors they lead to and we have experienced the fall that comes after the pride – I hope we have learned our lesson for the duration.

Not so Israel and the USA. Both of these countries are the products of a recent history, both were created through widespread ethnic cleansing of the native peoples and neither has yet been destroyed through its own hubris-driven nationalist supremacism, though they are still set on the same path. “God and Country” still mean something inspiring to their peoples and they are firmly convinced they are surrounded by enemies who “would destroy them” (victim/perpetrator pathology). This Weltanschaung derives from the fact that they are both products of European history and their current population were mostly groups of victims seeking refuge from the bloody wars raging throughout Europe. Their collective mindset is still predominantly that of the nation-building era. They believe they are fundamentally “good”, that they are involved in some momentous struggle against “evil” (defined as those peoples who resist their national ambition or are simply in the way), that God is with them and that they are embarked on a grand design.

This explains to a large extent, I think, the persistent and very deeply-rooted differences in the collective mindset. For most Europeans, patriotism is the last refuge of fools, for the majority of Israelis and many Americans, it is a virtue and an obligation and gives them the divinely inspired right to conquer other peoples and subjugate them.

Here on CIF, it’s abundantly clear that over and above the squabbling between right wing and left wing partisans, the deep currents that oppose people are rooted in this fundamental difference.

The USA is on the cusp of this curve – the Reagan-Bush era was the culmination of US nationalist hubris, with the ridiculous neo-conservative ideology of the New Rome, espoused by quite a few of our commentators here at the time (nudge, nudge…), today completely discredited. Its jingoistic sabre-rattling has undermined US influence and economic standing in the world and led to a momentous economic downturn. The Obama years symbolize, to some extent, the hang-over that Americans are experiencing after the wild Bush years, which have left the country in ruins. As the US goes into relative economic decline, a far more sober and realistic approach to the rest of the world will, I hope, prevail.

The Israelis have not yet reached this zenith and are still firmly convinced they are a force for good, that they are surrounded by evil enemies “who would destroy them” (with sticks and stones), that they can prevail through military might alone, although they have had quite a few warning signs in recent years (the last Lebanon war). They are still esconsed in the mindset of the Bush-Sharon years and are currently, in Gaza, trying to wash away the stain on their self-esteem they suffered from Hizbollah, on the backs of the defenceless Gazans – but their turn is coming up fast.

Once international observers arrive on the ground in Gaza, once investigations for war crimes get under way, they will discover that the stain on their international reputation will be profound and it will be much harder for them in future to sell their narrative. Within Israel, many people will begin to see the folly of the path they are pursuing and internal dissension from their non-Jewish citizens will become a serious threat to their co-existence. And the world will no longer be quite so favorable to their subjugation of the Palestinian people.

Pride always comes before a fall, in a nutshell.

Indiscriminate slaughter from the air is a barbarism that must be abolished

gingerwaster’s comment 16 Jan 09, 7:25pm

Correction : “are largely outweighed by the former” of course.

Indiscriminate slaughter from the air is a barbarism that must be abolished

gingerwaster’s comment 16 Jan 09, 7:23pm

Ozzitch

No the IDF is not “trying to kill as many civilians as possible”. If they were we would be into the hundreds of thousands of dead today.

From the evidence, there are isolated cases of soldiers, pilots or artillery men deliberately targeting civilians – a lot of the IDF’s troops in Gaza are the settler’s children (settlers have been encouraging their children to join the army in droves in the last few years – especially the elite units such as the Golani brigades). They subscribe to an ideology of jewish supremacy and ethnic cleansing and have been brought up to hate and despise Arabs – so put a gun in their hands, send them into a war zone with civilians and expect bloodshed. Some of these were settlers in Gaza and they are out for revenge.

In the main, however there is a policy not to target civilians, but if they happen to be in the way or in the wrong place at the wrong time, tough. A few cockroaches less….soldier’s lives are worth a hundred Arab ones, in this framework. Also, the IDF clearly indulges from time in a little terror, deliberately targeting a place they know is full of civilians, or a humanitarian center – these are intended as messages : “despair, you have nowhere to hide” or are aimed at causing chaos and confusion to disrupt the enemy’s organization.

They are, as I pointed out earlier, applying exactly the same military doctrines of shock and awe and overwhelming firepower as the Brits and the US troops in Afghanistan and Irak and the casualty ratio of combatants to civilians is roughly similar. You may have read that in the US army manual, it is acceptable to have a “collateral damage ratio” of 17 civilians for one “terrorist”.

One thing is sure – Hamas are fighting with sticks and stones and can’t even dent the Israeli armour, unlike Hezbollah, who were equipped and organized very much like a state-of-the art network army. It seems that rather than smuggling in defensive weapons such as anti-tank missiles and ground to air defences, they have focused mostly on importing their qassams – which means that they are basically totally out-gunned and unable to do much more than scamper around and be slaughtered en masse. Big mistake. That and being caught with their pants down. They can’t even protect their people, which probably means that they will have lost a lot of status by the time this is over and the wounds begin to heal.

The Israelis, who clearly have a very efficient network of informers on the ground, knew this when they went in and they’re basically, as Simon says, indulging in a turkey shoot.

We’ll see what happens in the next few days – maybe Hamas have an ace up their sleeve, but I doubt it very much.

One of the most important lessons here is that Hamas were never the threat to Israel’s existence that both their leaders and Israeli politicians made them out to be.

Another is that the Israeli leadership is quite happy stirring up hatred all over the world and particularly among their Middle East neighbours – perhaps because they need a permanent state of hostility to justify their continuing land grab and also – who knows ? – an increase in antisemitism might persuade more members of the diaspora to emigrate, thus helping them to solve the number one problem facing them in the medium term : demography.

Yet another is that our Western leaders are not in too much of a hurry to do more than be seen to be doing something – they’re in a bit of a quandary : Israel is their number one ally and has enough clout to end their careers, should they make too much of a fuss – and at the same time all that weapons consumption is great for business – both their country’s and their inner circles. So the incentive to really stand up and be counted is small – moral qualms, fear of losing a bit of popularity….the latter considerations largely outweigh the former.

Indiscriminate slaughter from the air is a barbarism that must be abolished

gingerwaster’s comment 16 Jan 09, 2:02pm

The problem is systemic folks. We can single out Israel if we like, but the tactics it is employing today in Gaza are a carbon copy of those used by the US & Britain in Irak, Afghanistan, Serbia, Nicaragua etc…

First, an aerial campaign of “Shock and Awe”, lasting several days, to disorganize your opponent, destroy his logistics chain, his command and control centers, his communications and to strike the population with terror and confusion, paralyze their will to fight. Civilians are not deliberately targeted, except occasionally to “send a message” or to generate confusion and chaos and in israel’s case, because there are more and more of the settler’s offspring in the IDF and under cover of war, they enjoy a turkey shoot of civilians. But the use of munitions such as white phosphorus, bunker-busters, daisy-cutters etc… and the sheer power of the high explosives creates significant “collateral” damage.

Then they move in with the troops, but flattening each area they approach beforehand and levelling it in front of the armoured divisions with bulldozers. Snipers are dealt with by levelling the buildings they are shooting from.

Finally, Fallujah style operations to clean up the enemy’s nests in civilian areas – that’s phase 3, which has not yet begun.

The defining characteristic is use of overwhelming force and thanks to modern technology, the ability to pinpoint attacks to limit damage on the scale of the Dresden bombings of WWII.

Above all, it entails an extraordinary amount of military hardware consumption with a cost/benefit ratio that is totally disproportionate – each lightly-armed enemy combattant killed costs upwards of half a million dollars.

And that’s the nub – all that hardware has to be replaced and the gigantic military-industrial complex that looms over the Western “democratic” world and controls many of the political levers depends on this type of military strategy, preferably applied to an insignificant “asymetric” enemy in an impoverished red zone of the third world, where reporters are few, civilian lives are worth nothing and chaos is acceptable.

This provides jobs in the West, stimulates the economy and above all, massively enriches the global elite, who all have large investments in the military aerospace sector through funds such as the Carlyle Group (Bush family, Baker, john Major, certain Arab Princes, former directors of the CIA, the Sarkosy family, etc..) and therefore get bumper dividends from the profits thus generated.

So despite the mouthing of platitudes, don’t expect the elites of France, the USA or the UK to make too much of a protest – modern war is a highly profitable industry for them, both politically and personally. If there’s too much of a public outcry, they may dampen things down, but very soon, a new “intervention” against some impoverished, defenceless country whose leadership can be successfully demonized and who, added bonus, has resources Western corporations want to get their hands on, will materialise.

Western democracies are systemically addicted to war, because they have to keep those production lines turning and large sections of the global “elite” have become terminal war junkies. All paid for by the unwitting tax-payer of course – the West’s proxies generally are compensated through “foreign aid” or loans that will never be repaid.

Perhaps the most telling sign of this was a recent incident that seems to have gone under everyone’s radar : the affair of the munitions ship turned away from a Greek port.

While the US leaders bluster publicly about “peace” and “stability” and condemn disproportionate use of force or tut-tut when too many civilians are torn to shreds in front of the cameras by the very weapons their factories are churning out, behind the scenes they were quietly chartering a ship to re-supply munitions to the Israeli army through the port of Ashdod, which is running short after its recent fireworks display in Gaza.

After Greek citizens in the port of Astakos discovered it and created a scandal, the delivery has been “suspended” and the ship has disappeared off the radar.

Meanwhile they are drawing out negotiations for a cease-fire, probably in part to allow as much time as possible for the Israelis to consume the merchandise thus kindly supplied.

All the moral outrage at the killings going on, all the condemnations, the outrage, are fine and dandy. But until people start addressing the real elephant in the room – the West’s addiction to the arms trade (US, France and the UK, with israel not far behind, are the world’s leading producers of all those highly sophisticated munitions that are burning and shredding Palestinian flesh), wars such as this one will continue unabated in one corner or another of the planet’s impoverished red zones.

Indiscriminate slaughter from the air is a barbarism that must be abolished

gingerwaster’s comment 16 Jan 09, 8:07am

Fornallwhatever

Yea, when you don’t launch rockets, you don’t get bombed.

Israel broke the truce, not hamas.

israel bombed Gaza at a time when not a single rocket had been launched for several weeks. They killed four members of hamas. During the truce, Hamas kept its side of the bargain. Israel didn’t – instead of easing the blockade, they tightened it.

But in your twisted logic, it’s always the other guy’s fault, you are always white as a virgin, even when the blood’s all over your trousers and you’re holding the butcher’s knife.

“It was him that rag head who made me pull the trigger in my F116 and shoot off that ten ton bomb that killed all those civilians – it was that Hamas bastard, I can’t help it – he made me do it, sir”

Go shove your Hasbara down some other idiot’s throat – it doesn’t wash here mate.

So what if Israel uses the internet?

gingerwaster’s comment 13 Jan 09, 1:12pm

Here’s a profound insight about what the I/P conflict is really all about – something Questionnaire posted on another thread. Right to the heart of the issue :

“This is a late-modern manifestation of the class struggle, but it is also a (very) late move by the Zionist bourgeoisie to construct a powerful military-industrial state that will serve and protect their interests, along with those of their business associates amongst the global bourgeoisie.

Here we have the heart of the problem.

The bourgeoisie, first in Italy, Holland and England, rose up from the lower orders, the peasant, artisan and merchant classes. Their rise was dependent upon three things: 1) social mobility, which is why the rigid Feudal caste system had to be broken down, 2) cultural recruitment in the sense that anyone ruthless enough to exploit labour, take financial risks and perform well in the market could join no matter what their class, cultural or religious background and 3) a commitment to a ruthless, Promethean modernisation, urbanisation, industrialisation and population expansion no matter what the human/social cost, which means industrial-style ‘development’ imposed on all peoples whether by persuasion or force.

The Palestinians, mainly Arab farmers who were happy enough growing their food, raising their families and attending their Mosques, are simply seen as an anachronism, something that belongs to a past that must be superseded. They must be simply cleared out of the way, as were the peasants in the fields of Europe between the 14th and 19th centuries.

However, the Zionist bourgeoisie don’t have 500 years to perform this task. They are stuck in a double-bind, two contradictory imperatives; they must very quickly expand and compete (they cannot rely on American aid forever) yet still remain exclusive. Unlike Christians and Muslims, orthodox Jews are not very enthusiastic proselytisers or recruiters. They are a relatively exclusive cultural group, and their reproduction relies mainly on the continuity of the bloodline.

Progressive Jews tried to move away from this, but orthodox Jews are still hostile to those who ‘marry out’ and the tradition still remains firm. Now, this means that they are unable to expand their bourgeoisie or their working class – which together constitute the economically functional class structure (privileged organisers plus exploited workers) of their cultural group as a whole, one which is coherent and powerful enough to prosper in a brutally competitive global capitalist market – by means of recruitment from other cultural/class groups.

In the past this has been done in the predominantly Christian West by means of immigration and assimilation. Unable to do this, they need a larger territory cleansed of all non-Jews – or at the very least with all non-Jews totally politically disempowered alongside their politically disempowered Jewish working class – in order to expand and become competitive, rich, secure and powerful without resorting to the inward immigration and socio-economic assimilation of non-Jews.

This is a historical tragedy caused by the forced fusion of two incommensurable aspects of the ancient and the modern.

I’m sorry to be depressing, but at the moment I can’t see a way out of this unless progressive forces amongst the Jews put an end to the tradition of exclusivity and attenuate the bourgeois ambition of Israel being a quick-grow military industrial state.”

So what if Israel uses the internet?

gingerwaster’s comment 13 Jan 09, 1:32am

Maybe Seth is already in Gaza, or not far off. He’s a reservist. Might explain a lot. Who knows ?

I don’t want to get involved in any tally-ho against him. He’s someone I have a lot of time for. He has a right to have any opinion he wants, doesn’t matter what I or others may think, on both sides. My only frustration is that he seems to be focusing on side-issues here (who gives a tinker’s damn whether some fool in a demo starts chanting “we are all Hamas now”, as if it mattered?), whereas what he excels at is describing pretty objectively what he sees at the flash-point of the conflict, what he feels in reaction to it, what people on the ground are experiencing and seeing, their hopes and fears. He has a curiosity and an open-mindedness that is both refreshing and enlightening and when at his best, give us the impression we’re standing right next to him, watching the scenes unfold, hearing the voices of the people he’s talking to.

So let’s not jump to conclusions about what he’s up to. I have faith in his ultimate sense of justice and his belief in truth rather than in the “convenient truths” of those who base their worldview solely on their perceived interests and prejudices. I don’t think for a moment that, like the characters in Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros”, he is becoming the opposite of what he was, under the collective pressure of a nation that thinks it’s on the brink of destruction by dangerous enemies (if this “war” has demonstrated one thing, it’s that Israeli’s paranoia about Hamas, which the ruling classes are constantly fueling, is largely unfounded – unless we have a momentous surprise in store, they are turning out to be one of the least effective resistance forces in history – despite all their fiery rhetoric).

The massacre Israel is carrying out (thank God there are NGO’s on the ground denouncing the crimes that the IDF has been indulging in in the fog of war – they seem to have ordered their troops to exercise a trifle more restraint, for fear of the international outcry) has little to do with the rockets or some momentous danger posed by Hamas. And a lot to do with the ongoing colonization in the West Bank. Hamas, the bastard child of Shin Beth, has served it’s purpose well and split the Palestinian resistance into warring factions, as well as providing the perfect propaganda tool to keep their population hostile, Western opinion at bay and pursue the annexation of the West bank.

I’m keeping my eyes peeled on the settlements – unless I’m much mistaken, the next couple of months will see a further spate of extensions and expropriations – that’s what always seems to happen during or after the regular bouts of blood-letting.

The criminal cynicism of Hamas

gingerwaster’s comment 08 Jan 09, 7:47pm

While Israel’s military, increasingly thronged with fanatical hooligans from the settlements, provides its ruling classes with yet another of the cyclical blood-baths of Palestinians they depend upon to bolster their sagging popularity among an electorate whose paranoia they constantly fuel, out come the well-heeled apologists to justify even the most horrific war crimes.

The mantras they use, constantly repeated under the illusion that the more media space they occupy the more their story will sell, are simple :

“1) HAMAS are evil terrorists and want to kill Jews everywhere
2) Hamas is a death cult and is happy when their people die
3) So it’s all Hamas’s fault (the expanding settlements, the occupation, the brutality, the destruction of the economy, the massacres)
3) we are only “defending our citizens”
4) Israel is an island of democracy and humanism, at the forefront of the West’s War on Terror, attacked on all sides by savage hordes of Jihadists who-hate-us-and-want-to-destroy-us.”

It’s the mantras all tyrannies trot out when perpetrating their worst crimes.

“That’s why we are killing and maiming Palestinian children in their thousands – we can’t help it, we really don’t want to do it, but our hand is forced.

Wouldn’t you go around killing children if your house was attacked ? Of course you would. Any life-loving person would. The blame lies squarely on the shoulders of their parents.

Anyway, we only kill them because they are in the way of our targets, who use them cynically as human shields – something that no Israeli would ever dream of doing. Honest. “

And yet……

(from the Guardian today)
“The human rights group Amnesty claims Israelis are also using civilians as human shields.

Malcolm Smart, its Middle East director, said:

“Our sources in Gaza report that Israeli soldiers have entered and taken up positions in a number of Palestinian homes, forcing families to stay in a ground floor room while they use the rest of their house as a military base and sniper position. This clearly increases the risk to the Palestinian families concerned and means they are effectively being used as human shields.”

More lies.

But the Hasbara campaign isn’t working – in fact it’s backfiring – the gap between the facts on the ground and the statements of the spin doctors is so wide that anyone with their eyes open can’t fail to see through it.

You have to really play the three monkeys to avoid coming to the conclusion that there are reasons behind this blood-bath that we are not being told. Namely, the pursuit of the land grab in the West Bank. They will have to continue these massacres at regular intervals, at least for the next 5 years, until the Wall is finished, the settlement blocks are all annexed, the West bank’s water sources are all secured in Israeli hands, Jerusalem is mostly empty of Palestinians and Israel’s final borders are unilaterally fixed. Palestinians will have been deprived of any chance of a viable state and with a bit of luck, perhaps under cover of a war with Iran, most will have been expelled or reduced to the status of gypsies surviving in lawless red zones.

After that, the palestinains and the liberals can whine : the dogs may bark, the settlement caravan will pass.

If they don’t continue to stoke the fires, there is a real danger that a negotiated two state solution will reduce their potential territorial and resource gains and give the Palestinians the one thing they want to avoid giving them at all cost – a state of their own. .

In the meantime therefore, keep the Palestinians squealing, goad them into terrorist actions, then when they retaliate, however ineffectually, point out how evil they are and use your huge media machine to drown out dissenting voices and to muffle the cries of the roadkill as it disappears under the bulldozer. Make sure your own population and the faithful diaspora stay scared out of their wits, keep mentioning the looming spectre of Iran, whip up the frenzy, drive forward the War of Civilizations in the Western media.

Those rockets are such an God-send – keep ‘em coming !

The only way they can justify this savagery is by constantly upping the ante of demonization. They’re running out of superlatives now – soon they’ll have to resort to religious metaphors to describe Palestinians. They could try “demonic”, “fiendish”, “diabolical”

(Oh hang on they already have – the Founder of Shas, which runs a large network of religious schools and has a lot of leverage within the Knesset, preached that Arabs were “vipers”, and ordered his followers to “anhialate them and send them missiles” and claimed God would “waste their seed”)

That’s exactly what his young devotees from the settlements, embedded within the IDF troops currently besieging Gaza, are doing, in fact. God’s will, I suppose….

“But we NEVER teach our children to hate like the Palestinians do. Honest”

Honest.

Support for Hamas crosses a line

gingerwaster’s comment 06 Jan 09, 5:52pm

Seth

You’re looking through the wrong end of the telescope, completely.

Almost no one on these pages supports Hamas or its strategy of targeting Israeli civilians, so why write a whole article about it ? There are far more important issues going on in this conflict.

We all know well that this millenarist movement’s ideology thrives on martyrdom and that its ranks are filled with people without a future who have become desperate and vengeful, having spent their entire lives under the Israeli boot, watching their land colonized, their friends and family imprisoned or killed, their people humiliated and pushed out of their homes and villages, their economy sabotaged. Hamas did not rise up in a vacuum or fall out of the sky in a spaceship.

When people become desperate, they turn to desperate ideologies. There are plenty of examples throughout history of this – even Jewish history.

But Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza is yet another nail in the coffin of a negotiated solution and will serve as a massive recruiting campaign for suicide bombers and apocalyptic desperados throughout the Middle East, just as the US invasion of Irak swelled the ranks of Al Qaeda. It is this misguided (to put it mildly) policy that gave rise to movements like Hizbollah, Al Qaeda and Hamas. In French we call this “la politique du pire”.

Why are israel’s rulers doing this ? It seems pretty obvious, since it’s been going on for 60 years now. They are buying time so they can finish their colonization policy in the West Bank. Another 5 years and they will have completed the wall, annexed the territories and water resources they want for the future state, secured East Jerusalem and squeezed out as many of its inhabitants they can, completed the ring-fencing of Jerusalem with settlements.

The biggest threat to this policy, which will leave the Palestinans with nothing but crumbs and a rump state, would be a negotiated solution. So they will talk about it till their ears drop off, make beautiful phrases in front of the cameras, empty promises to world “leaders”, who will pretend to believe them. But in the meantime, the creeping colonisation continues, the wall grows in length and cuts Palestinians from their lands, Palestinians are pushed out of their homes in Jerusalem, the Palestinian economy is worn down and the population is kept under lock and key. And every time we get anywhere near a negotiated solution, they throw a spanner in the works.

As TrueLeft says, they need to ensure this low-intensity conflict in the territories continues unabated during this period, maintain the hostility and desperation of the Palestinians, goad them into desperate actions, get them scampering “like cockroaches in a bottle”, which in turn justifies their refusal to raise the blockades or the checkpoints.

And to make damn sure it happens, every now and then, especially during election periods, some big shot or other needs to show his balls by carrying out some serious blood-letting, completely destroying the civilian infrastructure in passing, to ensure Palestinians do not make any economic progress that could lead to the foundations of a state and to keep the hostility alive.

In Gaza today, we are witnessing one more episode of this.

Yesterday, 800 children in the vicinity of Gaza city were either killed or wounded by the IDF, according to a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza hospital (video on the BBC News site). Many of those who were wounded will be maimed for life. All them will be deeply traumatised.

8 fucking hundred children, Seth….

Today, a school in which a group of Palestinian civilians were taking refuge was bombed. 40 people were killed, some of them children.

In some recorded cases, civilians are being used for target practice, under cover of the fog of war. Hardly surprising, since the settler’s children from Gaza and the West Bank have been joining the IDF in droves – and we know what their attitude to Palestinians is. Put a gun or a missile in their hands and watch the results…

Hamas are partly responsible for the situation – yes it’s true. Like the Israeli rulers, they have become convinced that only force works. This is a game in which both sides are vying to prove they have the biggest cock. Civilians, overwhelmingly on the Palestinian side, are paying the price. We will all pay the price, in the end.

But only one side has the ability to change the rules of the game. And at the moment, the Israeli rulers are doing everything in their power to make things worse.

So inveighing against a few powerless twits who make dumb statements praising Hamas is a bit of a pointless exercise, in my opinion. They are irrelevant.

We need to keep our eyes on the big picture, or we lose all ability to understand what is going on and more importantly, why.

Support for Hamas crosses a line

gingerwaster’s comment 06 Jan 09, 5:52pm

Seth

You’re looking through the wrong end of the telescope, completely.

Almost no one on these pages supports Hamas or its strategy of targeting Israeli civilians, so why write a whole article about it ? There are far more important issues going on in this conflict.

When people become desperate, they turn to desperate ideologies. There are plenty of examples throughout history of this – even Jewish history.

In Gaza today, we are witnessing one more episode of this.

8 fucking hundred children, Seth….

Today, a school in which a group of Palestinian civilians were taking refuge was bombed. 40 people were killed, some of them children.

But only one side has the ability to change the rules of the game. And at the moment, the Israeli rulers are doing everything in their power to make things worse.

So inveighing against a few powerless twits who make dumb statements praising Hamas is a bit of a pointless exercise, in my opinion. They are irrelevant.

We need to keep our eyes on the big picture, or we lose all ability to understand what is going on and more importantly, why.

The Israeli ambassador is wrong

gingerwaster’s comment 30 Aug 08, 3:32am

Petra

There are plenty of well-sourced quotes from eminent Zionist leaders, Israeli politicians and prominent religious figures that demonstrate pretty clearly that their intentions were by no means as peaceful as is sometimes claimed and that successive Israeli governments have been pursuing an expansionist agenda – one could begin with the Iron Wall and go all the way up to the current spiritual head of the Shas movement and several members of the current government. I could post them here if you’re interested, but it’s a bit of a fruitless debate – actions speak louder than words and from that angle, the evidence is undeniable and damning. You’re right that one can find plenty of bellicose quotes from the Palestinian side too – the hatred on both sides has increased with time and frustration at the fact that there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight to this bitter conflict.

In addition, the Camera crowd have been sweeping the internet relentlessly in the last few years to eliminate all evidence of unavowable intentions on the part of Israeli leaders (amazing the lengths some people will go to in order to revise history in favor of their particular narrative) – yet it’s equally true that there are a number of fabricated or unsourced quotes on many websites, some relatively reputable. It’s an incredibly difficult job to sort out fact from fiction in these casee and for many quotes, we will probably never know. For this reason I think you should accept Deepblue’s explanation that she did try to make sure the quotes she used were reliable. Furthermore I don’t think anyone can tax Deepblue with antisemitic comment on CIF – not to mention what she said in her previous post, namely that she is married to an Israeli soldier.

The gung-ho armchair warriors blogging from their homes far away from the conflict and childishly accusing all opponents of the Israeli government’s current policies with the antisemitic label will have to accept that in a normal, democratic society, citizens have a perfect right to oppose government policies and to state their opinions. All they are proving with their smears is that they are afraid of debate and devoid of valid arguments.

Culture of fear

gingerwaster’s comment 23 Jun 08, 6:58pm

TheOracle

“Don’t worry yourself gingerwaster. Settlements can be built and settlements can be un-built. people who are killed in terrorist actions can never be returned to life.

I don’t really like them. (excluding Jerusalem.)

However, if you didn’t have settlements to gripe about, you would probably find something else. (Holocaust survivors not having enough money, donkeys being mistreated in Arab villages etc.) There are plenty of them. Preemptive is fixated on our water.”

As expected, rather than answer the question, divert it with meaningless twaddle and then attempt a piece of half-witted ad homina.

Above all, avoid answering the question.

Try something simple, hasbara bullshit aside, answer the question if you’re capable – do you or do you not agree with Sarkozy’s remarks before the Knesset?

Ziongate

On the question of whether Jews are a nation, that nation being Israel (and therefore it follows that all Jews that don’t support Israel’s policies must be traitors and self-haters) I think it’s a question of individual choice. Israel Firsters would love to conflate Jews and Israel inextricably, but they only speak for themselves – they do not represent all jews. One could say jews are a people or a community bound by a common culture and to a certain extent by ethnic origin, that they have strong ties with israel, but you can’t say, logically speaking, that jews are a nation – otherwise the very concept of nation becomes nonsensical. Or do you consider Muslims to be a nation too? What about Buddhists? Or Christians? Or the Roma? Or the Kurds?

If you want to communicate with others, then you need to use words in their generally accepted meaning.

PS – a word of advice – try to answer the question rationally, without resorting to ad homina, which will immediately disqualify anything you say. Argue your case – if your arguments are good, then I’ll accept them.

gingerwaster
Comment No. 633344
June 12 15:19
FRA

The Jewish Supremacy Rag

(Deronda’s Lament)

The rottenest bits of God’s Promised Land
Are still in the hands of Arabian bands
Examine the Palestinian, the Egyptian or Druze
You’ll find he’s a stinker and envies the Jews