Haaretz reports today that the IDF has examined a second piece of shrapnel removed from a Palestinian victim of the Gaza beach massacre and found that it is not, according to them, from an Israeli shell:
An exhaustive examination of two pieces of shrapnel, which were extracted from Palestinians wounded in an explosion on the Beit Lahia coast in Gaza, conclusively prove that the shards did not originate from a 155-mm shell used by the Israel Defense Forces’ artillery corps on the day of the incident, an internal IDF commission of inquiry said Wednesday.
This contradicts an Israeli Channel 10 news report claiming that the same piece of shrapnel had been tested and been found to have come from an IDF shell. The Haaretz article also includes this tantalizing piece of countervailing information:
IDF Lieutenant Colonel Eren Toval, who supervised lab tests of the two pieces of shrapnel, said the shards did include high levels of explosives although their quality remains unknown. Kalifi added that explosives of this kind are employed by the IDF as well as by Palestinian armed groups.
First, you’ll notice that the IDF gives no detailed accounting of why it concludes the shrapnel is not from its shell. Yet the officer who supervised the test admits that the explosive residue on the shell is used by both the IDF and Palestinian militants. So what ‘precisely’ has been proven here? I feel as much up in the air as before and certainly no more convinced by the latest IDF statements on the incident. This is second time the IDF has pronounced itself blameless. The IDF strategy seems to be if we exonerate ourselves enough times then maybe someone will eventually believe us. Good luck.
Finally, let me point out for the umte-ump time here that no amount of Israeli military action will subdue the Palestinian militants. As with the U.S. war in Iraq, there is no military solution. There is only a political solution. I can only repeat this ad nauseum though neither the IDF nor the Israeli political elite seems to get it through their thick heads. So more die as a result. Many more Palestinians than Israelis to be sure. But needless Israeli blood IS shed because of Israel’s near pathological refusal to sit down and negotiate a final status agreement with Abbas.
you seem supremely confident that the way to resolve this is negotiation. do you even consider the possibility that the Palestinian leadership is a) not interested in negotiations, and b) uses negatiations as a way to better their aggressive position? i am struck by your cognitive egocentrism (http://www.theaugeanstables.com/reflections-from-second-draft/cognitive-egocentrism/) and the belligerent way you pursue your politically correct, post-colonial paradigm of innocent victims and guilty victors (http://www.seconddraft.org/ess_paradigms.php). You are a sterling example of the pathologies of self-criticism that afflict so many “progressives” and especially jews (http://www.theaugeanstables.com/reflections-from-second-draft/self-criticism/)
i’ll be interested to see whether you will allow this post and links that your readers might follow to places that disagree with you. you declare your rejection of insulting comments, and yet leave those kinds of comments at other blogs (like my “dungheap” of a blog). my guess is thatk, like so many “progressives” these days, you are thin skinned and consider disagreement not fine but insulting.
but maybe i’m wrong. maybe we can even discuss the problems with the politically correct paradigm which i would argue does great damage even as it is well-intentioned.
looking forward to being surprised by your maturity.
rl
“you seem supremely confident that the way to resolve this is negotiation. do you even consider the possibility”
Do you consider the “possibility” you may be wrong? Of course not, your comment was a shinning example of inebriated with the exuberance of your own verbosity. Basically your motive is clear having seen the pretty little websites you present to explain your derision laden comment. Having nothing of substance to counter the evidence of the “event” in question you slightly taunt, in the hope that it will prompt your comment to be left. In the hope people will view it and follow those links to where your answer to everything is a particular “side” in this conflict being “liars”. Thus deflecting from the attention from that so far, debacle that has been the contradictory and evidence shy “Iron clad” self exonerating investigation, that the IDF have presented that no one with an IQ higher than a fence post would accept as 100% convincing. I am assuming you do? As for Dialogue being the answer, who knows? but, and I will use simple terminology it saves on self advertising, that is of course you truly are the real Mr Landes. If you loose your car keys, and after decades you have looked in all the places they might be for them “bar one place”. Repeatedly looking in all the places you have already tried over and over, and ignoring that one place you have not, is an exercise in futility. who knows maybe you look in that one place and still no joy, but the chances are better of finding them there than in all the other well searched places.
Like I said, pretty websites, but remember pretty is a word that can used in front of other words such as lame, desperate and shallow.
Have a nice day.
Good Article richard.
I like that Richard L. (the “L.” to distinguish you fr. me), “pathology of self-criticism,” I’m going to inscribe that in my top 50 favorite insults slung at me here.
How much do you know about the history of Jewish thought? In my reading, Jewish consciousness is anchored in the notion of criticism. How else would Abraham have looked around him at all those idols & realized there was another way to God? How would our prophets have known there was anything wrong with their society unless they had critical faculties which allowed them to take a step back and see immorality for what it was? And where would the world be w/o Baruch Spinoza’s brave dissent fr. the modes of thought of his fellow Jews which enabled him to become the first natural philosopher. For his trouble, he was excommunicated. But what a contribution he made to the world in spite of that.
I add that I celebrate Judaism and those values inherent in Israel which represent the best of our traditions. But I do not shrink fr. criticizing those which hold us back fr. being what our tradition calls us to become: menschen. Israel is not behaving like a mensch regarding the Occupation & Palestinians. Until it does, I will go on with my “pathological” criticism.
True, that was a tad nasty. “Dungheap” was meant to be an ironic reference to your blog’s name, Augean Stables, and the massive dungheap it contained. As for my being nasty, I thought the post I’d read at yr site was such drivel & so insulting toward my fellow progressives I merely responded in kind. Besides, we each have a Delete button at our disposal & can use it as we see fit. I’d like to know if you deleted my comment or published it? In spite of your complex which leads you to believe that I will delete yr comment, you can see I didn’t. Did you publish mine?
thanks for your substantive response. i’ll respond interlinearly with my comments in italics (if your site takes those commands in comments. if not, you can tell mine for lack of caps. while you’re at it, add masochistic ominipotence syndrome, i.e., it’s all our fault and if only we were better we could fix everything.
How much do you know about the history of Jewish thought? In my reading, Jewish consciousness is anchored in the notion of criticism. How else would Abraham have looked around him at all those idols & realized there was another way to God? And where would the world be w/o Baruch Spinoza’s brave dissent fr. the modes of thought of his fellow Jews which enabled him to become the first natural philosopher. For his trouble, he was excommunicated. But what a contribution he made to the world in spite of that.
i actually have an essay on self-criticism in which i argue that a) without it, there is no civil society, nor free press, nor real academic accomplishment. i’m a big fan.
http://www.theaugeanstables.com/reflections-from-second-draft/self-criticism/
as for examples, sigmund freud is an even better example — a level of self-criticism rarely achieved anywhere. his Moses and Monotheism, with which i don’t agree, is a monument to being critical of one’s own tradition. it’s far more brutal than rushdie’s Satanic Verses. mind you there was no fatwa out to kill him from the rabbis when it was published.
I add that I celebrate Judaism and those values inherent in Israel which represent the best of our traditions. But I do not shrink fr. criticizing those which hold us back fr. being what our tradition calls us to become: menschen. Israel is not behaving like a mensch regarding the Occupation & Palestinians. Until it does, I will go on with my “pathological” criticism.
i agree that it’s the best of the tradition. but there’s a caveat here. i start my lectures on anti-semitism by quoting from Jeremiah and from “saint” John Chriysostom (golden-mouth). most people can’t distinguish. one is high level self-criticism, the other close to delirious anti-semitism. the diff? one is meant to help improve one’s own people thru reproach, the other intended to harm and destroy. i know you think you’re part of the jeremiah tradition, prophetic reproof, but in modern conditions, with the whole world listening, and the opposition so far from even a fraction of your self-criticism, this prophetic rhetoric can backfire. you do need to consider three issues.
1) your criticism of israel is so unbalanced that it turns off most jews who dismiss you as “self-hating”. (i don’t but that’s another discussion). if you were to turn your morally sensitive geiger counter on the palestinians, your equipment would short out. much too much hatred and demonization there to tolerate your standards.
2) the anti-semites out there (including the palestinian and arab and muslim spokesemen) just take your self criticism as an excuse for more demonization.
3) your average observer can’t possibly understand how vast a gulf separates the israelis/jews from the palestinians/muslims on the issue of self-criticism. when the palestinians say, “it’s israel’s fault,” and the israelis say, “yes it is,” the average observer suspects that it is israel’s fault.
so you end up feeding the cycle of demonization, hatred and violence that you think you’re trying to fix.
To quote a basball saying: “I call ’em as I see ’em.” I’m not seeking approbation from my fellow Jews. I expect that many people will feel uncomfortable with what I say. But that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to say it. Do you think Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos, etc. were universally beloved in their day? And remember that excommunication Spinoza suffered at the hands of his fellow Dutch Jews (not that I’m remotely comparing my own abilities to theirs)? Frankly I’d rather be right than be loved. And further, many Jews & Israelis not only say the very same things that I do; but they write either to me personally or express their feelings in my comments threads. Rarely do I feel lonely in my opinions of the conflict.
Oh but indeed I DO. It’s true that my denunciations of Palestinian terror are not featured as prominently as my denunciations of Israel’s woebegon Occupation policies. But that’s because I know & understand Israel better. Israel is more at the heart of my Jewish identity than is Palestine. I write what I know. But if you read my Mideast Peace posts you’ll find plenty of criticism of Palestinian violence & various misdeeds.
I am simply uninterested in protecting Israel from criticism it so richly deserves in so many instances involving this conflict. I have almost never heard here fr. any reader who used my posts to justify their hatred for, or demonization of Israel. Out of 700 or so comments by readers in this blog perhaps five (if that) have had that tenor. I’ve read far more hatred here directed at me by Jewish hardline pro-Israel supporters or by Christian evangelicals who have the temerity to call me a bad Jew.
I am glad to hear you published my comment. One of these days I’ll stop by yr. blog again & write something more civil & engaging than my previous comment.