Day 6: 95 Palestinians killed, 720 wounded.
The title of this post is harsh. But the one I first considered was even more so: “Barack Obama, go to Hell.” I am so glad I didn’t vote for this man for president. At the time I cast my vote I did it thinking I was doing the right thing. But in my heart regretting it. If I had voted for him, now I my heart would be turning bitter as gall.
Here is what this sorry excuse for a leader had to say today in Thailand:
“[T]here is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders. So we are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself from missiles landing on people’s homes…
Let’s understand what the precipitating event here was that’s causing the current crisis, and that was an ever-escalating number of missiles that were landing not just in Israeli territory but in areas that are populated.”
I also discovered this statement which appears to have been made separately and covers related, but different ground:
“Israel has every right to expect that it does not have missiles fired into its territory,” President Barack Obama said at a news conference in Bangkok at the start of a three-nation visit to Asia.
“If that can be accomplished without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza, that’s preferable,” Obama said. “It’s not just preferable for the people of Gaza. It’s also preferable for Israelis, because if Israeli troops are in Gaza, they’re much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded.”
Let’s address this lame excuse for a political argument. First, it could’ve been (and possibly was) drafted by an Aipac staffer. It’s directly taken from pro-Israel talking points. You’ve heard the same bullshit from Michael Oren a hundred times. What this argument omits is that Israel has Gaza in a stranglehold. It has turned the enclave into a virtual prison having no economy, no exports, no ability to travel in or out. Gaza is occupied in effect by Israel. This occupation is illegal. Any nation has a right to resist such an occupation.
I do not support firing missiles from Gaza into Israel. But I do not support Israel’s occupation of Gaza either. I do not expect Gazans to roll over and play dead for Israel’s benefit or for the benefit of a U.S. president who has his head up his ass.
The real issue isn’t whether Israel has a right to attack Gaza. The issue is how to get at the root causes of this conflict and resolve it. F-16s, drones, targeted assassinations and helicopter gunships only kick the football farther down the road, as Mitt Romney so aptly put it (who’d have ever thought that Obama would actually follow a Mideast policy outlined by Romney).
Obama says he’s opposed to an Israeli invasion not because many Gazans will be killed (he clearly doesn’t care about that) but because Israelis will die. Have you ever heard anything so callous? Yes, I suppose in all the history of this conflict there have been far more callous statements. But by a U.S. president? Not so many.
Barack Obama: go to Hell. You don’t give a damn. You don’t have a moral bone in your body. Give back that Nobel Peace Prize. You don’t deserve it. In fact, you’ve pissed on it and turned it from gold to (cast) lead.
Former Israeli national security advisor Gen. Giora Eiland, on the other hand, made an amazingly forthright statement about what should be the outline for a fair resolution of the current impasse in Gaza. For that reason, of course, it will be ignored by those in power. But it still deserves a fair hearing:
“Israel’s bottom line interest toward Gaza is a security issue – that they won’t fire at us,” said Eiland, who also served as the head of Israel’s National Security Council. “Consequently, if we can reach an arrangement, it’s preferable to give ground on certain political issues in exchange for a better security arrangement.”
This sort of agreement would include “a mutual cease-fire and an Egyptian guarantee of not just quiet, but also that no weapons will enter Gaza,” Eiland said, adding that “this arrangement would be guaranteed by additional parties, for example, Qatar and Turkey.”
Among the political compromises that could be made in exchange for such a security arrangement, Eiland listed lifting the naval blockade of Gaza “so that the European Union member countries could send under supervision dinghies into Gaza’s port.”
Eiland also suggested that Israel recognize Gaza as a state under Hamas’ rule. “This is a country a ruled by an elected government and I expect that this government will act in a responsible manner, like a state would,” Eiland said.
“It’s not enough to say ‘Hamas will surrender,’” Eiland continued. “We need to give something, if not to Hamas, then to others. It’s impossible to reach a point where one side will surrender. Sometimes we become captive to slogans like ‘We won’t talk with Hamas.’ I say the opposite. It’s a fact that Hamas rules Gaza and that Gaza is a state. We need to recognize this and utilize the advantages this situation presents.”
The thinking is that if Israel recognizes Hamas as ruler of Gaza, it will place the onus on the Islamist group to run Gaza and fully control what happens there. In effect, Eiland is saying to make Hamas put their money where their mouth is: you want to rule this place–do it. And if you don’t, we and the world community who are enforcing this agreement will hold you accountable.
There is also a strategic element to his thinking that is unspoken. If Israel breaks Palestine into two entities, then Palestinian strength and aspirations for statehood will be even more fragmented than they are now. Hamas will have less interest in creating a coalition government with Fatah because it will control its own fiefdom in Gaza. The West Bank and Gaza may be permanently severed. That part of Eiland’s strategy is pernicious in the long-term. But it doesn’t mean that much of what he’s saying wouldn’t make things better than they are now in Gaza itself.
I can’t tell you how refreshing this breeze is. It’s a bit of truth. And coming from a general bristling with medals and lots of dead Israeli enemies under his belt. This is not some peacenik or “Arab lover.” This is the very same dude who whitewashed the Mavi Marmara massacre on behalf of the IDF, for whom he investigated it.
I do have to say though that there’s a strange dynamic at work in Israeli politics: when you’re an official and within the system, you lie and say things that make you and your country sound like an idiot. When you leave the system, all of a sudden you become a seer and things you didn’t appear to know or couldn’t say come tripping off your tongue. The same phenomenon occurred with Ehud Olmert after he resigned his prime ministership. While he was in office he tried to sell Mahmoud Abbas a bill of goods in the guise of a legitimate peace agreement. After he left, he called the settlements a cancer eating at Israel’s insides.
So some of this may be at work in Eiland’s change of heart, if you can call it that. But who cares? Truth is truth whether it comes from a sane person or a mad man.
Something further that is interesting here is that Eiland is making these statements–ones that cut to the heart of the weakness of Israel’s “mowing the grass” approach to Gaza–only five days after the start of hostilities and even before the expected invasion. In other words, the general is already saying the emperor has no clothes. The way this usually works is that the critics wait until a few weeks in after the soldiers and civilians have started dying in significant numbers. That’s the time when the body politic becomes more receptive to such contrarian thinking. So Eiland is bucking this trend and deserves credit for doing so.
When you read the following you will understand my outrage directed against Barack Obama. Today should be the Kfar Kana or the al-Samouni moment in this war. The former was the tragedy during the 2006 war when Israel attacked a Lebanese village near a UN base killing scores of civilians. After that atrocity, the war was essentially over though Israel didn’t realize it at the time. My fear is that the murder of 12 Gaza civilians in a bombing that flattened a 3-story apartment building filled with civilians will not be enough of a tragedy to end this growing madness. More of the innocent may have to die before the world tells Israel: Dayenu!
The al-Dalou family was sheltering in its home from the bombardment. Earlier, two male family members had left to procure supplies because they feared an imminent invasion. They survived. Five women, four children (all between two and five years-old) and two men died. One of the women was 81 years old:
Khalil al-Dallu screams. “They said Mohammed was alive!” he shouts as emergency workers pull the body of a young man from a Gaza City home levelled by an Israeli strike on Sunday. His face quickly crumples into tears as the emergency staff tell him that his cousin is in fact dead — one of six members of the Dallu family killed when an Israeli missile struck the Nasser neighbourhood, flattening the three-story building where they lived.
“The whole family is martyred!” he cries, as the body of 35-year-old Mohammed al-Dallu is placed in an ambulance.
“What was the sin of the children and the infants, Israel?” he screams, raising his hands to the sky.
The emergency workers carry on with their grim task. By the time their work is done they have pulled 11 bodies from the pancaked building and others around it. The body of Mohammed’s wife is also retrieved, as well as those of five of their children. The body of another woman, also a family member, is also pulled out although she is not immediately identified.
The strike has also killed two of their neighbours from the Muzzana family.
Mohammed’s father, Jamal, and his 17-year-old son Abdullah, are among the survivors. When the Israeli strike happened, they were out buying food to boost the family’s stocks because they feared an Israeli ground invasion.
Jamal leans on a bloody electricity pole for support, overwhelmed at the horror and loss in front of him, his relatives crowding around as pieces of his grandchildren are plucked from their former home. Near hysterical with anger and sorrow, Ibrahim shouts: “Don’t tell his brother Abdullah, the trauma will kill him!” The brother, 26-year-old Abdullah, is currently studying in Turkey to become a doctor.
… Ahmed Hato, 13, is still dazed by the sudden death visited on the family.”I was playing with the sons of the neighbours at the entrance to the street. There was a huge explosion, the earth shook and dust and rocks went everywhere. I don’t know how, but I ended up on the ground and without injuries,” he says.
Ahmed’s father can’t watch the rescue efforts, and doesn’t answer his phone. Instead he cries openly for Mohammed, whom he saw just an hour before the strike. Mohammed, a Hamas police officer, “was a good man, moral and kind to everyone,” he says. “Everyone loved him. His death is a huge loss for the family.”
It turns out, as it often does in these sorts of IDF incursions, that the IAF was trying to assassinate the head of Hamas’ rocket warfare unit, Yechiya Rabiah (must be the guy who took over from Dirar Abusisi after his “forced retirement” at the hands of the Mossad and Ukrainian intelligence), who lives nearby. Ooops, they got the wrong house. Another intelligence failure. Only killed 12 innocent civilians as a result. Terribly regrettable. But if Rabiah would only do the IDF the favor of living in an open field so it could kill him cleanly, these sorts of things wouldn’t have to happen. You know how that Hamas uses civilians as human shields.
What created even more bitter irony is that just as when it dropped a bunker buster bomb during the 2006 war on Hassan Nasrallah’s Beirut hiding place, the IDF crowed that it’d taken out yet another terrorist bad guy. Turns out that Nasrallah and Rabiah are very much alive. What do you say in the midst of such insanity: woops?
Even an IDF journalist-stenographer like Avi Issacharoff writing in Haaretz concedes the Gaza operation is “starting to get into trouble” because too many civilians are dying. All I can say is boker tov buddy, civilians were dying from the first moment of the fighting. It’s just that now they’re starting to pile up like cordwood. But if Issacharoff wants to wake up only today on day six, it’s better than sleep walking through an entire war before realizing 1,400 Gazans have been slaughtered as happened during Cast Lead.
At what point does Barack Obama become moved enough, or boxed in enough by this suffering that he’s finally got to get off his ass and do something?
By the way, Israeli polls find that while 90% of Israelis support the Gaza war (only 16% support a ceasefire), only 46% support an invasion while 32% are opposed. That’s a sizable minority viewpoint.
I believe O. regularly rains missiles on other countries.
Only every other day or so, I think.
TIBOR: “I am thinking of a joint Israeli-Jordanian framework, which the West bank and its inhabitants in their entirety will belong to… ”
How can one possibly respond to such an arrogant statement? (I’ll wait for Deir Yassin and Mary to give it their best shot)
(Sorry, Richard, no REPLY option)
Tibor wrote:
“I think Obama understood that the real dividing line is not anymore Arabs versus Israel but one that runs through the Arab world between those that yearn for normalcy and don`t want to be left behind in a fast moving world and the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah that want to keep “the flame” of the “grand resistance” and with that their own relevance and domination. Obama has chosen to side with the former.”
This seems to me largely wishful thinking. I mean it is not impossible that the US foreign policy establishment holds this view – the country has, after all, shown a remarkable aptitude for betting on the wrong horses in the last sixty years or so – but that affairs are developing as Tibor wants them to seems to me highly improbable.
What Israel has managed to do is to bring about an Egyptian-Turkish axis to begin with.
The Turkish Review – “Today’s Zaman” wrote on 11/19::
“The name is quite intimidating: “Turkey-Egypt High Level Strategic Cooperation Council.”
The Turkey-Egypt axis represents the most important aspect of the general trend wherein they try to alter and put a stop to Israel’s attacks on Gaza. In the Middle East, the harmony emerging between Turkey and Egypt will also inflame Israel’s paranoia. The Arab Spring destabilized the delicate balance which the US and Israel have worked, year in and year out, to create through labor, money and scheming.
…
We must look at Israel’s Gaza attacks as a dangerous trap set for Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. Is there any other explanation for the continuation of the attacks even while Morsi visited Gaza? The same trap is set for Turkey.
…
Prime Minister Erdoğan’s visit to Egypt is a critical point to see if the two countries Israel set traps for will fall into or overcome them. Israel is pressuring Turkey and Egypt to act thoughtlessly.
…
Israel declared war not on Gaza but on the new order, with Turkey among its numbers, in the Middle East. However, the growing closeness between Egypt and Turkey is based on a deep mental, historical repertoire and societal support. It does not appear to be easily abandoned”
Erdogan made no secret of what he thinks of Turkey’s former ally. The Turkish Hurriyet Daily news reported today:
“Erdoğan described Israel yesterday as a “terrorist state” for carrying out its bombardment of Gaza,
…
“Those who associate Islam with terrorism close their eyes in the face of a mass killing of Muslims, turn their heads from the massacre of children in Gaza,” Erdoğan told a conference of the Eurasian Islamic Council in Istanbul. “For this reason I say that Israel is a terrorist state and its acts are terrorist acts.”
Egypt’s and Tunisia’s reactions were equally harsh:
Glenn Greenwald wrote in the Guardian (17/11/12):
“In reflexive defense of Israel, the US government thus once again put itself squarely at odds with key nations such as Turkey (whose prime minister accused Israel of being motivated by elections and demanded that Israel be “held to account” for mounting civilians deaths), Egypt (which denounced Israeli attacks as “aggression against humanity”), and Tunisia (which called on the world to “stop the blatant aggression” of Israel).”
Well, perhaps those harsh voices don’t represent Tibor’s dream category, those “who yearn for normalcy” (and thus won’t oppose Israel) but, as it so happens, they are far more likely to determine policies in the region.
What does the much trumpeted Quartet (Blair et al) say about this latest outrage?
Its understandable that you do not support raining iranian made missiles from gaza on israeli territory and even towns/cities.
But can you stop if from happening?
The answer would be a ‘BIG NO’.
● RE: “[T]here is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders. So we are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself from missiles landing on people’s homes…” – Obama / “O’Bomber”
● MY QUESTION FOR OBAMA / “O’BOMBER”: What country on Earth would tolerate being subjected to an illegal blockade for more than five years? ? ? Israel is truly the “little sadist”, but Obama, AIPAC and the United States are the “Big (Global) Sadist(s)” ! ! !
● SEE: “U.N. experts say Israel’s blockade of Gaza illegal”, By Reuters, 9/13/11
LINK – link to reuters.com
● P.S. MY SELF-CONGRATULATION(S): I am feeling so darn good about having voted for Jill Stein of the Green Party rather than “O’Bomber”, who obviously authorized Israel to once again “mow the grass” in Gaza in keeping with Israel’s “Iron Wall” obsession. I do not believe Netanyahu would have been able to “play” Jill Stein (“for a fool”, or “like a violin”) nearly as easily as he has been able to “play” Obama.
I guess I should thank my lucky stars that I don’t live in a “swing state” where I might have been tempted to vote for Obama/O’Bomber as the “(not very) lesser evil”!
Israel is truly the “little sadist”, but Obama, AIPAC and the United States are the “Big (Global) Sadist(s)” ! ! !
● P.P.S. ALSO SEE: “Preparing to ‘Mow the Grass’ in Gaza”, By Paul R. Pillar, consortiumnews.com, 3/17/12
Even as Israeli leaders focus the world on a possible war with Iran, the neocons are prepping public opinion for another bloody assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, what one article likened to “mowing the grass.”
ENTIRE COMMENTARY – link to consortiumnews.com
● PLEASE CONSIDER SIGNING THE “FREE DON” SIEGELMAN PETITION. – link to change.org
“Israeli polls find that while 90% of Israelis support the Gaza war…”
I have wondered when seeing these poll results whether Palestinian Israelis get to be polled. Since I understand that around 20 percent of Israelis are Palestinian, it’s hard for me to believe they would be overwhelmingly in favor of Israel attacking Gaza and carrying out wholesale slaughter of Palestinian women and children there. Does one have to be Jewish to be considered Israeli enough to be counted?
The poll DID only include Israeli Jews, which does skew the results.
Claiming that “90% or Israelis support the Gaza war” when at most it’s only 90% of 80% is racist and deceptive. Clearly the vast majority of Jews in Israel are happy with what is being done in their name, but why would anyone think it necessary to lie to deceive people into thinking the percentage is even higher than it actually is?
It continues into the night:
A new family massacre: an air strike on a house in Beit Lahya killed Fuad and Amna Hijazi and their four year old twins, Suhaib and Muhammad.
Two brothrs of 15 and 17, Muhammad and Ahmad Tawfiq al-Nasasra were killed in an air raid in Rafah.
In the West Bank two Palestinians died today: Rushdi Mahmoud Hassan al-Tamimi , 28 years, died from injuries inflicted during a solidarity rally with Gaza on Saturday in his village of Nabi Saleh. He was shot in the stomach by a heroic IDF-soldier.
Hamdi Mohammad Jawwad al-Falah, 22 years, from Hebron, was shot four times by live bullets from close range in the head and heart during a solidarity rally with Gaza.
Many seriously wounded all across the West Bank.
All on Ma’an News.
Israel can successfully peddle the “human shields” story because most people, especially Americans, do not realise how tiny the Gaza strip is. The Tel Aviv metropolitan area is more than four times bigger but has less than twice its population. In other words the population density of the Gaza strip is twice that of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. There are hardly any wide open spaces there where rocket launchers could be put away from civilians to make things convenient for the IDF. So it moans about “human shields”.
Tel Aviv metropolitan area : 1516 km2
Population: 3,206,000
Gaza strip: 365 km2
Population: 1,700,000
(Source: Wikipedia)
[comment deleted for comment rule violation–your comment was not substantive which it needs to be.]
Israel could successfully peddle the “human shields” story because most people, especially Americans, do not realise how tiny the Gaza strip is. The Tel Aviv metropolitan area is more than four times bigger but has less than twice its population. In other words the population density of the Gaza strip is twice that of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. There are hardly any wide open spaces there where rocket launchers could be put away from people and as a seductive target for the IDF. So it moans about “human shields”.
Tel Aviv metropolitan area : 1516 km2
Population: 3,206,000
Gaza strip: 365 km2
Population: 1,700,000
(Source: Wikipedia)
So Hamas bears no responsibility for endangering the lives of its citizens? And are you justifying the rockets as necessary and assuming Israel should just live with the indiscriminate rocket fire against its civilians?
Are you saying that in the death of Israeli civilians during the Lebanon & current war that the Israeli government bears no responsibility for endangering their lives? Of course they do. Hamas bears even less responsibility because it did not start those wars, Israel did. As for who is responsible for killing Palestinian civilians? Israel, of course.
Sure but is Hamas not putting gazans at risk unnecessarily by continuing to launch pointless rockets, knowing that israel will respond, and that their response will cause casualties considering the dense population and the rockets firing from residential areas? If I was a gazan I would wonder why Hamas believes that it should put its people at risk for pointless violence on israel. The solution here should be nonviolent, otherwise Israel crushes them in a military conflict and what’s the point for Hamas? In my opinion Hamas bears a lot of responsibility as there are other nonviolent strategies it can pursue and I still have difficulty finding any logical purpose for their rocket attacks.
If you were Gazan and had half a heart you’d be in the Resistance, to paraphrase Barak’s famous remark. Or perhaps you’d be a collaborator turning in your neighbors to your Shabak handler?
I do find it ever so ironic and maddening when Israeli Jews or their boosters offer their own opinion about what Hamas or Gazans or Palestinians should do, when they’d be far better off trying to change the asinine policies of their own government.
What makes you think that your advice or judgments about what Palestinians should do have any value whatsoever?
Firstly, thanks for the rudeness u must have been angered today, and don’t generalize me as anyone when you don’t know where I’m even from. I came here to find answers to some of my question and gain another perspective on this issue but u seem to be getting too rattled to answer fairly or informatively. So do you mind answering a question or are you just turning to spewing hate and judgement. What logical purpose do the rockets serve? Aside from being a product of frustration are they not pointless and self defeating? So pleae turn of your judgment meter and help disperse some information as is the purpose of this blog. We are all against suffering but I am definitely pro logic and reason and your answer is lacking any of that. No need to attack people or be rude maybe you just need to cool off a bit. A real answer would be nice and appreciated
[comment deleted for violation of comment rules–read them and don’t break them. Comments must be substantive and relate directly to blog post.]
Richard, so who did you vote for?
Jill Stein, but not out of great conviction.
ah ok yeah I almost went down that same path myself…thanks, Marc