7 thoughts on “Wisdom and Folly from U.S., Israeli Media on Gaza – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
task-attention.png
Comments are published at the sole discretion of the owner.
 

  1. FROM LAURA ROZEN’S EXCELLENT BLOG:

    I asked former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy, currently in Israel, why, while recognizing the pressure on the Israeli government to do something about the rockets from Gaza hitting southern Israel the past weeks, did Israeli officials choose to strike Hamas security facilities at midday when they were full of people, with high loss of life and almost certain dramatic escalation of the conflict? “I do not fully understand why they went for such a disproportionate escalation,” Levy writes. “My guess: a combination of electioneering and misplaced wishful thinking that this will push the Arabs/world to intervene and downsize Hamas on terms favorable to Israel ….[This] won’t happen – certainly not in a sustainable way. By the way, Hamas probably thinks this will cause intervention on terms favorable to themselves – also misguided (though less so; long term, this helps Hamas is my guess).”

    SOURCE – http://warandpiece.com/

  2. FROM YGLESIAS @ “THINK PROGRESS”-

    Marty Peretz on the Gaza attacks:

    Message: do not f**k with the Jews.

    I think that’s exactly right, and also incredibly idiotic. To people who feel besieged and impotent to resolve the political paralysis afflicting their country, something like sending the message “do not f**k with the Jews” must feel incredibly cathartic. But you have to ask yourself which Palestinian having lived through decades of Israeli occupation and all sorts of different ups-and-downs of Israeli policy and all manner of retaliatory strikes and cease-fires is really unaware that Israel doesn’t like being fucked with? The psychology of catastrophe is that one wants (a) to improve the situation, and (b) to lash out at a bad guy.

    Under the circumstances, the temptation to decide that you can best accomplish (a) by doing (b) is overwhelming and so you respond to 9/11 by invading Iraq. But already the number of Israelis killed by Hamas rockets has increased (from a baseline of zero) since the retaliatory attack that was supposed to prevent such killings.

    SOURCE – http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/12/getting_tough.php

    PERETZ POST – http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_spine/archive/2008/12/27/very-disproportionate-indeed.aspx

  3. John Dickerson
    “The message is: do not f**k with the Jews.”

    yes exactly right. When people ask, Why are the Israelis doing this, I answer: because they can.
    They do it for the same reason that soldiers in Congo cut off a woman’s breast or shoot her in the vagina – because they can. In neither case is there a paramount military objective. True, some Israelis think that by terrorizing the Palestinians they will leave the land for the Jews “from sea to sea”.

    But the politicians and generals who carry out the actions, are not so stupid. They know well the Palestinians, having endured 40 years of suffering, are not going to turn tail and run. Where would they run to anyway? Perhaps they should drown themselves?

    So there is no military objective, there is only blatant cruelty, and the “fun” of seeing people that you despise cower. They do it because they can, and they will continue to do it until the “international community” [is there such a thing?] stops them, or until Israel as a country implodes.

    Meanwhile there are things you can do. Write letters, The US Campaign to End the Occupation
    http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=1771
    has a letter to Barck Obama you can sign.
    This web site – http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=3993 – has a list of your senators and others you can write.

    You can hold a protest – one person or one hundred.
    Do it for the sake of your conscience, not because it will necessarily change anything.
    Do it so when your children and grand-children ask you what you did to stop the genocide of the Palestinian people, you can say – I tried.
    I took an action.

  4. To all the people who sleep safely in their beds at night and have the audacity to criticize the Israeli government, this is for you:
    None of you spoke in the past 8 years when rockets and bombs fell in southern Israeli cities, causing death and damage without any provocation on our part.
    What you need to understand are two things-
    First of all, there is no functioning government in Gaza. The Hamas took over (in a military coup!) and they are running the show. The Hamas, in case you didn’t know, is a terror organization. Just like Al-kaida and Hezbollah. Israel is dealing with terror organizations all around its borders. Not with governments. And not with civilians. We have nothing against the Palestinians. Only the terrorists.
    The second thing you need to know is that the Hamas is a very cynical organization which uses innocent women and children to fight Israel. They launch their missals from civilian’s houses, not from open fields or military camps, and when the Israeli army wants to destroy those missals launchers- sometimes innocent people die.
    They stash weapons; bombs etc. in hospitals, mosques, civil houses and schools exactly for this purpose- they know that the Israeli army will not bomb those places. Over the years, they have dig tunnels between Egypt and Gaza to smuggle everything, including weapons which is being used against us.
    The Israeli army has such advanced technologies they can surgically hit those places. And that is exactly what we are doing. The manipulations in the media, done by the Arabs are ridicules, at best.
    Ask yourself- what would you do if your life was constantly under threat? Look at the map. Maybe that will help you grasp our geographic situation.
    The purpose of the Israeli army is to defend. Not attack.
    So next time you think about how miserable and poor the Palestinians are, and how powerful and evil the Israelis are- think again.
    (Written by a left-wing Israeli who thinks terror should not win anywhere in the world).

  5. Why are Iranian grad missiles falling upon Israel? If Gaza is under siege, how did the Grad missiles get there? Why hasnt Iran gotten any criticism for escalating this conflict?

  6. The Israeli Center-Left shows its moral bankrupcy in the face of a coming election. Apparently, championing the peace process can be tossed to the wayside when a handful of votes are at stake.

  7. @shira: What horse manure. If you are a left-wing Israeli then I’m a Kahanist & I ain’t one, lady.

    I googled the text of your comment & you’ve published it verbatim at least six other places online. I’m tired of canned right wing hasbara. Can’t you right-wingers actually take the time to write individual comments? Do you have to make hasbara into assembly line political propaganda?

    Of course there is (or would be if Israel allowed it to function) a functioning government in Gaza. In fact, when Hamas rules there is almost no crime or corruption as was rampant when Fatah ran things. When Hamas agrees to a ceasefire and Israel does as well there is remarkably little backsliding on the Palestinians’ part because Hamas actually enforces it.

    Hamas is NOT “just like” Al Qaeda or Hezbollah. Far from it.

    BTW, if there are no “governments” on Israel’s borders then what are Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon? Are they terrorist gangs as well?

    They launch their missals [sic] from civilian’s houses

    Where do you get such nonsense? How do you launch a missile fr. within a home?

    They stash weapons; bombs etc. in hospitals, mosques, civil houses and schools

    Precisely what Begin’s Irgun did as well except they stashed their weapons with their wives, mothers and grandmothers believing the British would not dare search them.

    Over the years, they have dig tunnels between Egypt and Gaza to smuggle everything, including weapons

    What about food, medicine and building materials of which there are none thanks to Israel’s siege? Have you forgotten that the tunnels provide bare necessities of life that Israel denies Gaza?

    The Israeli army has such advanced technologies they can surgically hit those places.

    That must be why 400 Gaza civilians are dead, because of all that advanced, surgically accurate technology.

    what would you do if your life was constantly under threat?

    I’d negotiate for a peaceful settlement so my children wouldn’t have to fight future wars.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *