Israeli Soldiers Describe Atrocities in Gaza
Via Jonathan Zasloff, some accusations of serious war crimes from within IDF ranks:
When asked why that elderly woman was killed, a squad commander was quoted as saying: “What’s great about Gaza — you see a person on a path, he doesn’t have to be armed, you can simply shoot him. In our case it was an old woman on whom I did not see any weapon when I looked. The order was to take down the person, this woman, the minute you see her. There are always warnings, there is always the saying, ‘Maybe he’s a terrorist.’ What I felt was, there was a lot of thirst for blood.” [...]
Amir Marmor, a 33-year-old history graduate student in Jerusalem and a military reservist, said in an interview with The New York Times that he was stunned to discover the way civilian casualties were discussed in training discussions before his tank unit entered Gaza in January. “Shoot and don’t worry about the consequences,” was the message from the top commanders, he said. Speaking of a lieutenant colonel who briefed the troops, Mr. Marmor said, “His whole demeanor was extremely gung ho. This is very, very different from my usual experience. I have been doing reserve duty for 12 years, and it was always an issue how to avoid causing civilian injuries. He said in this operation we are not taking any chances. Morality aside, we have to do our job. We will cry about it later.”
One doesn’t know the extent of these things, but both of the people speaking here are describing orders that were given to groups of people, not just individual instances of bad conduct. Needless to say, there are atrocities and war crimes associated with every war, so there’s no indication that this was any worse than any other military’s conduct. But by the same token, there are atrocities and war crimes associated with every war. A lot of the stateside supporters of this Israeli action seemed completely blind to that reality, as they imagined the IDF somehow stepping pristinely through the most densely populated place on earth and perfectly plucking out Hamas villains rather than, say, gunning down old ladies. That, however, is not the way of the world. And the result is a military operation that’s responsible for orders of magnitude more civilians deaths than were the rocket attacks it was supposedly going to put a stop to.
Next up, we’ll see if the new Netanyahu/Lieberman era of Israeli politics leads to any serious inquiries into these allegations with accountability for the culpable. I wouldn’t say I’m optimistic about that, but it could happen.
82 Responses to “Israeli Soldiers Describe Atrocities in Gaza”
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March 20th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
A lot of the stateside supporters of this Israeli action seemed completely blind to that reality, as they imagined the IDF somehow stepping pristinely through the most densely populated place on earth and perfectly plucking out Hamas villains rather than, say, gunning down old ladies.
Hey, you’ve got to give somebody credit. They probably didn’t individually and personally gun down the grandmas, they just… blew them instead.
There’s an opening here for a novelty hit: ‘Grandma got run over by the IDF’.
Next up, we’ll see if the new Netanyahu/Lieberman era of Israeli politics leads to any serious inquiries into these allegations with accountability for the culpable. I wouldn’t say I’m optimistic about that, but it could happen.
This deserves some kind of award for understatement of the year.
max
['Mistakes were made.']
March 20th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
I was reading one of those accounts that included an IDF officer pissing on the floor of a house they were occupying, and I heard this voice in head say “Of course he was aiming at the toilet, in a war mistakes happen!”.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Most of the reactionary response to stories like this goes as follows (in no particular order):
1. We didn’t do it and anyone who says we did is an anti-Semite. Here present evidence of a massive conspiracy to smear Israel, a new blood libel, or whatever.
2. We did it and it’s good that we did because that’ll send a message to the Palestinians. They only understand force so we need to get tough.
3. We did it but we didn’t mean it, whereas the Palestinians do it on purpose. Didn’t you hear where (Israeli politician/general X) said the IDF is the most moral army in the world?
Throw in a few more accusations of anti-Semitism, reheat, and serve. It would be nice if the excuses offered by the IDF’s defenders were internally coherent once in a while.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
And the result is a military operation that’s responsible for orders of magnitude more civilians deaths than were the rocket attacks it was supposedly going to put a stop to.
Dear Matt,
Since you are not really a journalist but a hack, let me tell you a couple of things –
first, there are far more civilian deaths among palestinians because Hamas uses civilians as human shields (something to my knowledge you’ve NEVER blogged about) and builds tunnels for weapons and cover, rather than shelter. If you would take the time and actually, you know, GO to Sderot, you’d see that Israel builds bomb shelters for its civilians. Ergo, there is a lower mortality rate from the rockets.
Second, if you were at all curious you’d recognize that the Hamas rockets are getting more sophisticated and more deadly. But why depart from your theme?
Third, if you actually spent some time with Israelis you may know that Hamas, Hizbollah and assorted terrorists would often use women and children as bomb mules. Witness the famous picture several years ago of a retarded child forced to strip because he was carrying a bomb. My good friend was almost blown up in Lebanon by a black clad woman who ignited herself not 50 yards from a checkpoint. American soldiers have been killed by cars that are blown up at checkpoints in Iraq. But if you’re not interested in the context in which these wars happen, then you’re not interested. I guess you’d have to get out of your pajamas and off of your coach.
Fourth, if you were at all curious you may actually look up from where this information came — meaning that Danny Zimer, the person who published it, is very far on the left of Israeli politics.
Therefore, pending an investigation it is difficult to know how extensive these instances were.
But why would you care about the facts — hell — just blame Israel and watch your anti-semite commenters come out of the woodwork!
You’re enough of an idiot when you laud Elliot Spitzer — who was hated in NY by most Democrats before his fall. But if you tackle incediary subjects like this you could bring an “all the facts” mindset to it.
Oh well, I guess you and your Liberal friends on JournoList just decided it was time to bash Israel again today!
March 20th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Shit, I totally forgot
4. We shot civilians but it’s Hamas’ fault, and if we ever shoot a civilian it’s because Hamas was using them as human shields.
5. They were probably suicide bombers in disguise. That teddy bear was probably made of plastic explosives and nails.
Thanks ba!
March 20th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
spokey — are you as much of an ignorant moron as MY?
According to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers “2004 Global Report on the Use of Child Soldiers”, there were at least nine documented suicide attacks involving Palestinian minors between October 2000 and March 2004[3] In 2004, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers reported that “there was no evidence of systematic recruitment of children by Palestinian armed groups,” also noting that this remains a small fraction of the problem in other conflict zones such as Africa, where there are an estimated 20,000 children involved in active combat roles in the Sudan alone.[4] Human Rights Watch also reported that “there was no evidence that the Palestinian Authority (PA) recruited or used child soldiers.”[5]
According to the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, in the al-Aqsa Intifada, Palestinian military folk have used children as “messengers and couriers, and in some cases as fighters and suicide bombers in attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.” Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) have all been implicated in involving children in this way, see Convention on the Rights of the Child. The issue was first brought to world attention after a widely televised incident in which a mentally handicapped Palestinian teenager, Hussam Abdo, was disarmed at an Israeli checkpoint.[6] The youngest Palestinian suicide bomber who blew himself up was Issa Bdeir, a 16-year-old high school student from the village of Al Doha. He blew himself up in a park in Rishon LeZion, killing a teenage boy and an elderly man.
Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International has strongly and repeatedly condemned violence against civilians:
Palestinian armed groups have repeatedly shown total disregard for the most fundamental human rights, notably the right to life, by deliberately targeting Israeli civilians and by using Palestinian children in armed attacks. Children are susceptible to recruitment by manipulation or may be driven to join armed groups for a variety of reasons, including a desire to avenge relatives or friends killed by the Israeli army.[7]
Despite the harsh condemnations and internal controversy, Palestinian militant groups such as Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Islamic Jihad, have used children as militants and suicide bombers.
[edit] Indoctrinating children
According to emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine Vamik Volkan,
Most suicide bombers in the Middle East are chosen as teenagers, “educated,” and then sent off to perform their duty when they are in their late teens or early to mid-twenties. The “education” is most effective when religious elements of the large-group identity are provided as solutions for the personal sense of helplessness, shame, and humiliation. Replacing borrowed elements sanctioned by God for one’s internal world makes that person omnipotent and supports the individual’s narcissism. I found that there was little difficulty in finding young men interested in becoming suicide bombers in Gaza and the West Bank. Repeated actual and expected events humiliate youngsters and interfere with their adaptive identifications with their parents because their parents are humiliated as well. [8]
Volkan gives the examples of beatings, torture, or the loss of a parent as typical humiliating events which might make a young person more susceptible to recruitment for suicide terrorism.
Once recruited, children and teenagers are encouraged to cut off contact with “real world” affairs and subjected to an intense program of memorization and repetition of the Qur’an based more on sound than on meaning.
The typical technique of creating Middle Eastern Muslim suicide bombers includes two basic steps: first, the “teachers” find young people whose personal identity is already disturbed and who are seeking an outer “element” to internalize so they can stabilize their internal world. Second, they develop a “teaching method” that “forces” the large-group identity, ethnic and/or religious, into the “cracks” of the person’s damaged or subjugated individual identity. Once people become candidates to be suicide bombers, the routine rules and regulations, so to speak, or individual psychology does not fully apply to their patterns of thought and action.[8]
Anne Speckhard, adjunct associate Professor of Psychiatry, Georgetown University Medical Center and Professor of Psychology, Vesalius College, Free University of Brussels, writes:
In the Palestinian territories, there currently exists a “cult of martyrdom”. From a very young age children are socialized into a group consciousness that honors “martyrs”, including human bombers who have given their lives for the fight against what is perceived by Palestinians to be the unjust occupation of their lands. Young children are told stories of “martyrs”. Many young people wear necklaces venerating particular “martyrs”, posters decorate the walls of towns and rock and music videos extol the virtues of bombers. Each act of suicide terrorism is also marked by a last testament and video, which are prepared ahead of time by the “martyr” who can later reach great popularity when the video is played on television. Despite the very deep and real grief of the family and friends left behind, the funerals of “martyrs” are generally accompanied with much fanfare by community and sponsoring organization. Often, the effect of this is confusing to outsiders as it can disrupt, delay and even circumvent the family’s ability to focus on its grief over the loss of a family member and it may even support the family in claiming to outsiders joy over the loss of its loved one. This “cult of martyrdom”, which has a strong underpinning in longstanding cultural roots (the honoring of martyrs), appears to have developed principally over the last decade, as the first act of suicide terrorism occurred in Israel only twelve years ago.”[9]
Umm Nidal, who sent three of her sons, including one 17 year old, on suicide attacks, said “I love my children, but as Muslims we pressure ourselves and sacrifice our emotions for the interest of the homeland. The greater interest takes precedence to the personal interest.” She was later elected to the Palestinian legislature on the Hamas ticket.[10] According to Human Rights Watch,
Major Palestinian armed groups, including Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas, have publicly disavowed the use of children in military operations, but those stated policies have not always been implemented. Some leaders, including representatives of Islamic Jihad and Hamas, have said that they consider children of 16 to be adults. International law defines a child as any person under the age of eighteen. [...] Israeli government policy in the Occupied Territories defines Palestinians under the age of 16 as minors while Israeli children in the same territories are considered minors until they reach the age of 18.[11]
[edit] History
[edit] Incidents from September 2000 through 2003
According to the Israel Defense Forces:
* Since the beginning of violence in the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, 29 suicide attacks have been carried out by youth under the age of 18.
* Since May 2001, 22 shootings attacks and attacks using explosive devices were carried out by youth under the age of 18.
* Since the beginning of 2001, more than 40 youths under the age of 18 were involved in attempted suicide bombings that were thwarted (of them, three during 2004).
On 29 March 2002, Ayat al-Akhras, a teenager from the Deheishe Refugee Camp near Bethlehem, detonated explosives strapped around her waist in a supermarket in Jerusalem, killing herself, a 17 year-old Israeli girl named Rachel Levy, and a 55 year-old security guard named Haim Smadar.
[edit] “Baby Suicide Bomber” photo
Picture of the “Baby Suicide Bomber”
The ‘Baby Suicide Bomber’ refers to a photo that received media attention in 2002. [12]
During a search done on 29 June 2002, of a house belonging to a Hamas militant in the town of Hebron[12], The IDF found a photo showing a Palestinian infant dressed as a Hamas terrorist wearing a suicide bomber’s harness.
The picture shows a boy, about 18 months old, standing wide-eyed in a baby suit. Red wires are strapped to his waist, which is clad in a pretend explosives belt, and across his head is tied a red bandana of Hamas.
According to BBC News the baby’s grandfather, Redwan Abu Turki, said that the dressing of the infant baby as a bomber was from a rally at the university and that “the picture was taken just for the fun of it”. [13]
Israeli newspapers published the photograph under headlines such as “Terror in Diapers” [14] and “Born to Kill”. [15] Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s advisor Dore Gold said the picture “symbolizes the hatred and incitement which the Palestinian leadership has been feeding a whole generation of Palestinian youths.” [16]At the U.S. State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher stated that he considered the image as “a highly objectionable display.” [17]
While Palestinian officials dismissed it as a “propaganda trick”, Haaretz reported that a Palestinian journalist in the Hebron area said she did not believe the picture was a fake and expressed surprise at the furor it caused in Israel [18]
“I can find you many, many photos like this,” she said. “Many kids imitate adults and wear toy masks and guns, especially during marches. It’s not strange at all”. She added that she had seen children as young as the one in the photograph wearing similar costumes: “In our society it happens a lot. It’s a kind of phenomenon.”
Other photos of children dressed up as terrorists have been published since then.[19]
[edit] Incidents in 2004
On March 24, 2004, one week after capturing a bomb in the bag of 12-year-old Abdullah Quran, Hussam Abdo, a 16-year-old Palestinian (who initially claimed he was 14), was captured in a checkpoint near Nablus wearing an explosive belt. The young boy was paid by the Tanzim militia to detonate himself at the checkpoint. IDF soldiers manning the checkpoint were suspicious of him and told him to stay away from people. Later, an EOD team arrived and by using a police-sapper robot, removed the explosive belt from him.[20][21] Hussam explained that he was offered 100 NIS and sex with virgins if he would perform the task. He said his friends mocked him in class.[22]
On May 29, 2004, The New York Times reported Israeli allegations that the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades were using children to recruit classmates as suicide bombers.
One child, Nasser Awartani, 15, of Nablus allegedly recruited four of his classmates, one of whom was claimed by the Shabak report on Awartani to be Hussam Abdo.
On June 16, 2004, two girls – aged 14 and 15 were arrested by the IDF for allegedly plotting a suicide bombing. According to an IDF statement, the two children were recruited by activists from Tanzim (Fatah’s armed wing), guided by Hezbollah.[23]
On July 3, the Israeli Security Forces thwarted a suicide bombing which it claimed was to have been carried out by 16-year-old Muataz Takhsin Karini. Karini and two of his operators were arrested, while a 12 kg explosive belt was detonated safely by an Israeli EOD crew.[24] On June 5, IDF forces detonated two explosive belts concealed in schoolbags. On July 14, the Shin Bet arrested in Kfar Maskha a suicide bomber. The bomber was identified as 17-year-old Ahmed Bushkar from Nablus.[25]
On September 23, 2004, a day before Yom Kippur, the Shin Bet and the Israel Police announced their capture of a 15-year-old suicide bomber and a 7 kg explosive belt in the village of Dir-Hana in the Western Galilee. The 15-year-old was part of joint terrorist cell of Tanzim and Palestinian Islamic Jihad from Yamon village near Jenin. The four were Palestinians who worked illegally in Israel. The 15-year-old was allegedly paid 1000 shekels in order to blow himself up in Afula.[26][27]
According to a Shabak report published on September 26, 2004, about 292 Palestinian children have been involved in terrorism.[28]
On September 27, 2004, a 15-year-old suspected suicide bomber was arrested in Nablus.[29] On October 28, Ayub Maaruf, a 16-year-old Fatah suicide bomber, was arrested near Nablus along with his operator.[30]
On November 1, 16-year-old Aamer Alfar blew himself in Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market, killing 3 Israelis in a suicide bombing that was claimed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Alfar’s mother and father condemned what they saw as the exploitation of their son:
“God will curse those who recruited Amar. I had heard the stories about recruiting children in Nablus but I didn’t think they were true… Yes, it is difficult here for everyone because of the occupation, and life in Nablus is intolerable, but children should not be exploited in this way.”[citation needed]
On November 4, a 15-year-old suicide bomber was arrested in Nablus.
[edit] Incidents in 2005
On February 3, Mahmoud Tabouq, a 15- or 16-year-old Palestinian, was arrested at the Huwara checkpoint near Nablus carrying a bag containing an explosive belt, an improvised gun, and 20 bullets. The belt was detonated safely by a Magav bomb squad.[31][32]
On April 12, a 15-year-old Palestinian boy identified as Hassan Hashash was caught at Huwara checkpoint hiding five pipe bombs under his coat. He tried to ignite them with a match when the soldiers apprehended him. Later he was disarmed, and sappers detonated the bombs safely. Family members of Hashash suggested that he deliberately carried bombs into an IDF checkpoint in order to be arrested and study for the “Bagrut” final exams in the Israeli jail.[33] A week later, another Palestinian youth (aged 17) was caught carrying explosives in Beit Furik checkpoint.
On April 27, two Palestinian teenagers, both aged 15 (though other sources cite their ages as 12 and 13), were arrested at a checkpoint near Jenin after 11 explosive charges were found on them. One teenager was recruited by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the other by the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. The two told interrogators that they had been acting as couriers for terrorists, but security forces suspect they planned to get close to the soldiers and then detonate the charges.[34]
On May 22, Iad Ladi, a 14- or 15-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber was arrested at a Huwara checkpoint near Nablus. This was the 14th time during April and May that a Palestinian child was arrested as a bomber or a courier. Two days later, another 15-year-old Palestinian teen carrying two pipe bombs, was caught at the same checkpoint. On June 15, The Israeli press reported that the Shabak arrested a Palestinian terrorist cell in Nablus during the previous month. The cell included eight members, four of whom were child suicide bombers. The cell was on the verge of committing another suicide bombing attack using the four children. According to the Shin Bet, the cell was directed and funded by the Fatah’s Tanzim branch and the Lebanese group Hezbollah.[35]
On October 11, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy was arrested by IDF forces. He told the soldiers he was forced to agree to commit a suicide bombing when two terrorists from Fatah’s Tanzim faction threatened to murder him by spreading a leaflet accusing him of collaboration unless he agreed. They took pictures of him with a gun and the Qur’an and forced him to write his own will.[36]
[edit] Incidents in 2007
On August 27, 2007, A 15-year-old Palestinian boy carrying 2 explosive devices on his body, was arrested in the northern Gaza Strip after he attempted to carry out an attack against soldiers operating in the area against Palestinians launching Qassam rockets on Israeli civilians across the border inside Israel [5]
March 20th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Third, if you actually spent some time with Israelis you may know that Hamas, Hizbollah and assorted terrorists would often use women and children as bomb mules. Witness the famous picture several years ago of a retarded child forced to strip because he was carrying a bomb. My good friend was almost blown up in Lebanon by a black clad woman who ignited herself not 50 yards from a checkpoint. American soldiers have been killed by cars that are blown up at checkpoints in Iraq. But if you’re not interested in the context in which these wars happen, then you’re not interested. I guess you’d have to get out of your pajamas and off of your coach.
If you actually spent some time with Israelis you may know that the IDF oftens use soldiers and airmen to deliver bombs. Witness the pictures last year of an Israeli jet dropping bombs on Gaza. My good friend was almost blown up in Lebanon by an Israeli pilot who dropped a bomb not 50 yards from where my friend was standing. Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombs in Gaza. But if you’re not interested in the context in which these wars happen, then you’re not interested. I guess you’d have to get out of your pajamas and off of your coach…..
March 20th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Dear Ba: If you are an Israeli citizen, I respect and respectfully disagree with your opinion.
If you are not, you are clinically insane.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
For Spokey, uhmmm, i mean Mohammed (that’s your name right?)
The case of a 14-year-old Palestinian boy captured wearing a vest packed with explosives at a West Bank checkpoint makes the headlines in Israel’s media and prompts condemnation of the people who sent him out to die.
Viewers saw footage of what Israeli television called a “mentally challenged” boy stopped at a checkpoint south of Nablus.
The boy, Husam Abdu, was shown standing at a distance from the Israeli soldiers whilst he was instructed in Hebrew how to remove the vest.
‘Frightened child’
“After a roughly 40-minute drama in full view of the cameras filming a frightened child wearing an eight-kilogram explosive vest, Husam managed to take off the explosive charge,” the TV reported.
In the Israeli press on Thursday pictures of “the little bomber”, as they call him, dominate the front pages.
Some show him dressed in an oversized army jacket, others picture him bare-chested, having removed the suicide belt at the roadblock.
I wanted virgins in heaven
Yediot Aharonot
The boy became shy, Jerusalem Post reports, asking the Israeli troops, “Do I have to take my clothes off here?”
The paper praises the “quick-thinking” of the Israeli paratroopers who noticed the boy.
“It is sad and tragic,” a battalion commander tells the paper. “My soldiers spotted Abdu as he pushed through the line of Palestinians waiting to undergo inspection.”
“Seeing the soldiers’ weapons, he became frightened and told the soldiers he was scared,” the commander said, adding that the soldiers’ quick action also “saved the lives of 200 Palestinian men, women, and children who were at the roadblock”.
“Blowing myself up is the only chance I’ve got to have sex with 72 virgins in the Garden of Eden,” The Post quoted Husam as saying his handlers had told him.
His family said the teenager had acted strangely on Tuesday, inexplicably handing out sweets, getting his hair cut in the style his mother liked, and telling her he would do anything she wanted.
“You are never like this,” The Post quoted her as saying, “What’s happened?”
He replied: “I just want you to be happy with me.”
Unloved
“I wanted virgins in heaven,” is the headline in the Hebrew paper Yediot Aharonot. It quotes the boy as telling his interrogators: “My teacher told me what was waiting for me in heaven so I decided to commit suicide.”
The boy reportedly said he was scared when the belt was put on him. “Now I’m afraid my mother will be angry with me,” he added.
I wanted to be the man
Ma’ariv
Yediot Aharonot asks the teenager: “What went through your mind, Husam, a second before you were stopped at the roadblock? Did your legs tremble with fear, or with the weight of the belt? Did cold sweat drench your body? Where was your mother?”
It tells him: “Children, Husam, should not be in paradise, they should be in the playground.”
Ma’ariv focuses on the boy’s desire to be a hero. “I wanted to be the man” is its headline.
The paper says Husam told the soldiers questioning him that he was willing to commit suicide “because people don’t love me”.
A Ma’ariv commentator compares those who “send boys to explode and turn into pulp” to “Satan”.
And a Yediot columnist asks: “Who poisoned his soul? Who planted in him the tons of hatred that made leave home to kill and get killed?
BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Stefan – I know you love Hamas. DO you have this on your wall?
Hamas Principles
The principles of the Hamas are stated in their Covenant or Charter, given in full below. Following are highlights.
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).
“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. ”
“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”
“After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”
The charter is a rather classical Islamist document, applied to the local issues. It declares that Jihad (in the sense of armed battle) is the only solution. It cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a ludicrous anti-Semitic forgery.
The “Zionists” and the freemasons and others are blamed for what Hamas and radical Islamists see as the major calamities of the world, especially the French Revolution.
One of the most ominous aspects of the Charter however, is this Hadith:
Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Muslim).
The implication is clear: Allah promised that the Jews will be murdered, and the Hamas “aspires to the realisation of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take.”
March 20th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
you’d see that Israel builds bomb shelters for its civilians.
The children in the south, they sit in MMD. They can’t go to pitzutziah, can’t go to school, but you don’t understand because you live out in the hul.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Amnesty International is gravely concerned about reports that earlier today a 14-year-old Palestinian child was found to be carrying explosives when attempting to pass through the Israeli army checkpoint at Huwara, at the entrance of the West Bank town of Nablus.
Reports indicate that the boy was wearing an explosive belt, which would suggest that he was knowingly carrying it. According to Israeli army reports the boy may have intended to detonate the explosive belt, and thus commit suicide, near soldiers manning the checkpoint.
Last week, Israeli soldiers discovered a bag of explosives in the possession of an 11-year old Palestinian child at the same checkpoint. The boy, who regularly carried bags for travellers from one side of the checkpoint to the other, was reported not to have been aware that one of the bags on his cart contained explosives.
Amnesty International has repeatedly condemned suicide bombings and other attacks against civilians by Palestinian armed groups as crimes against humanity. Using children to carry out or assist in armed attacks of any kind is an abomination. We call on the Palestinian leadership to publicly denounce these practices.
Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Martyrs’s brigades, must put an immediate end to the use or involvement of any kind of children in armed activity.
Background Information
In the past three years there have been other cases in which Palestinian children have been used by Palestinian armed groups to carry out or attempt to carry out suicide bombings or other attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers.
In January a 17-year-old Palestinian detonated an explosive belt he was wearing as he was being tracked down by Israeli soldiers, killing himself and without hurting anyone else. The boy apparently intended to carry out a suicide attack to revenge the killing the previous week by the Israeli army of his 15-year-old brother and his cousin, neither of whom were armed when they were shot dead by Israeli soldiers. He had reportedly been given the explosive belt by members of the Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad.
Palestinian armed groups have pressured families of those who have been killed while carrying out attacks, including children, not to condemn but to welcome and endorse their relatives’ actions.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Palestinian armed groups should immediately end all use of children in military attacks, Human Rights Watch said today, following a Tel Aviv suicide bombing by a 16-year-old that killed three Israeli civilians Monday.
Most Palestinian armed groups claim to disavow the use of children in military activities, but at least 10 children have carried out suicide attacks in Israel and the Occupied Territories since October 2000. Monday’s attack was the second suicide bombing by a child linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A previous attack by a 17-year-old in Netanya in May 2002 was also linked to the group.
“Any attack on civilians is prohibited by international law, but using children for suicide attacks is particularly egregious,” said Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “Palestinian armed groups must clearly and publicly condemn all use of children under the age of 18 for military activities, and make sure these policies are carried out.”
Major Palestinian armed groups, including Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas, have publicly disavowed the use of children in military operations, but those stated policies have not always been implemented. Some leaders, including representatives of Islamic Jihad and Hamas, have said that they consider children of 16 to be adults. International law defines a child as any person under the age of eighteen.
Human Rights Watch said that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade has been implicated in at least four suicide bombings by children. These include bombings by 17-year-old Ayat al-Akhras in Jerusalem in March 2002; 17-year-old Issa Abedrabbu Ibrahim Badir in Rishon Lezion in May 2002; 16-year-old Sabih Abu al-Saoud in March 2003 and 17-year-old Islam Qteishat in Rosh Ha’ayin in August 2003.
Islamic Jihad has been linked to at least three suicide bombings by children, including attacks by 17-year-old Safwat Abdel Rahman in Tel-Aviv in January 2002, 17-year-old Hamza Aref Samudi near Mejiddo junction in June 2002; and 17-year-old Iyad al-Masri in January 2004. Hamas has also been implicated in attacks carried out by children. In August 2003, 17-year-old Khamis Gerwan carried out a suicide bombing near Ariel, an illegal West Bank settlement.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
ba;
Impressive use of the cut and paste option. I’m quite aware of these reports, having read most of them and helped to write and edit similar reports. Plus I lived in Haifa in 2002 and 2003, so I know a wee bit about being on the receiving end of terrorists. I have no doubt that most if not all of the information in the reports you cite is in fact correct. But thanks for the lecture regardless.
Now, what I want you to do is submit similarly well-sourced, credible information saying that these and reports of Israeli atrocities are totaly fabricated. That B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, PCHR, the UN, the EU, the State Department, Ha’aretz, and the Israeli military are all lying when they confirm that these things have actually happened. (I can’t help but notice that you hold up HRW reports, for example, as gospel. Surely you know that HRW’s archives are full of devastating exposes and condemnations of totally inexcusable Israeli war crimes.)
Absolutely nothing you submitted says anything about whether or not Israeli soldiers did in fact target civilians and murder them unjustifiably. It’s a straw-man fest.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Someone is going to throw a rock over that big ass wall surrounding Gaza and hit a Jew on the head on accident and when the IDF goes on an insane, vicious, rampage he’ll be back cutting and pasting his old talking points from the second intifada.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
We tried to watch “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” last night, and couldn’t make it 10 minutes. It’s a story Lemuel Gulliver might have given us in the full fury of his disgust at the human animal. A criminal is promised a horrifying execution to the cheers of thousands. A child pops out of the womb right on top of a pile of offal. Animal guts are ripped out for our delectation. Children — orphans, of course — attempt to smother an infant that annoys them. That I made it that far is shameful. A movie like that couldn’t reflect reality, could it? And then, of course, one reads the news.
The Bible — a book that is a foundation document of Judaism and Christianity and the source for the line of prophets for Islam — is steeped in self-righteous slaughter. Men, women, and children by the tens of thousands. So, at this late date, for any of the damn antagonists in that quadrille to pretend to niceties regarding their enemies is intolerable. They’re all lying and vicious.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
@ba – wow, you were really sitting on some facts ready to unload – I suppose the bottom line of your post is it is all right if the Israeli’s killed unarmed civilians.
You know I’m tired of all the posts that say Israel kills innocent civilians, which it does, and those that say the killings are collateral damage, which they are but they are still innocent civilians, or Israel kills innocent civilians because look at all the atrocities these people from the same ethnic group have caused so therefor it is all right to kill innocent civilians.
I’m also tired of people, like Matt, saying yeah Israel kills innocent civilians but so do other countries. Does that make it any better?
Finally I’m tired of the Israelis telling us they have the most moral army in the world – http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1886856,00.html
To all you people caught in your heritage, born into a certain race, religion or whatever, stop sticking up for your group no matter what it does. You had no choice what you were born into but I hope you have enough of a mind to see an atrocity when it happens.
I’ve got a message for you all. Those who love Israel and those who hate it. Israel is no different than any other country. It’s army is no more moral than any other. The innocent people it kills are just as dead as those killed by other countries.
Israel slaughtered “1,434 Palestinians, including 960 civilians,” according to the above article. Justify that if you want but to me it is unjustifiable even if what the soldiers said about having a free fire zone is not correct. Most moral army, my ass.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Spokey — you really are a moron.
Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that the soldiers accounts are true. The fact that Hamas, etc. have used children and women as suicide bombers changes the equation somewhat when such a person is approaching your position in a war zone. It’s not like you encounter these civilians walking down the street in DC.
That is called context. It’s not a “license to kill” — far from it. Of course these incidents should be investigated.
But if you’re a soldier in the middle of a war and your enemy has used civilians as human bombs in the past, your reaction might be a bit different than if they had never done so.
So Spokey — you can sit on your ass wherever you live and call us murderers but given the same situation you might act the same way. Or are you so virtuous that you’d risk getting killed?
some straw man argument!
March 20th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
IDF soldiers kill Palestinian children with head shots. I wish I could find the article again. Maybe it was in Harper’s magazine about five years back I read an article by a former IDF soldier that was talking about how easy it became to shoot Palestinian children in the head for throwing rocks. It kept him awake the first night, but after that he got used to it.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Geez Wiley — when you get that Blood Libel, please send it along. Would love to see it. by the way, can you return my copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Thanks
March 20th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Yeah, ba? What was the tactical necessity of pissing and shitting on peoples floors and spitting on their family pictures? Get creative here, you know there is an answer there. I’ll work on it for you, see if I can’t come up with something.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Yea Ed — tell me something i don’t know. A couple of shmucks act indecently. Happens in every army, in every war.
What’s the scale Ed — it’s the Jewish Army — so it must be massive?
Have you ever heard of Abu Ghraib?
ba
March 20th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
ba;
OK, so here’s #6 on the lsit of excuses provided by apologists for Israel:
6. Sure we killed civilians but we can’t tell the good guys apart from the bad guys so it’s inevitable.
Now I actually agree with this. Look at any counterinsurgency; the occupying army (US in Vietnam, US in Iraq, Israel in West Bank/Gaza) has no way to tell who is who, and the locals aren’t going to help them out. So soldiers under pressure have to guess and sometimes they guess wrong. Or they are so freaked out by the stress of their situation that they snap and start killing civilians all over the place. This happens whenever a war like this takes place.
Where you and I part company, ba, is that I say the following; if it’s bad that innocent civilians get killed by soldiers who can’t tell who’s who, then the soldiers shouldn’t be sent into that situation in the first place. This is also what Amnesty and HRW and all the other human rights organizations that you’re so fond of quoting say. To invade someone else’s land, kill some civilians, and then say it’s the other guy’s fault because he was mixed in with those civilians, is simply passing blame. If you hadn’t invaded in the first place this wouldn’t be an issue.
Israel’s flacks seem to be without peer in inventing excuses for Israeli atrocities. Seriously, “we shoot and cry”? That’s supposed to matter? What the fuck?
Wiley–Chris Hedges wrote an article called “A Gaza Diary” in Harper’s–is this the one you’re thinking of?
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2001/10/0075814
March 20th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children’s graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques – these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription “Better use Durex,” next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter’s T-shirt from the Givati Brigade’s Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull’s-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, “1 shot, 2 kills.”
A “graduation” shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, “No matter how it begins, we’ll put an end to it.”
March 20th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Just saw a link to this on Sullivan.
“Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children’s graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques – these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty.”
Read more
March 20th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Spokey –
where you and I part company is that if rockets are being shot into my sovereign territory, my soldiers have an obligation to protect me. under your reasoning, Hamas can hide itself in the civilian population and shoot rockets with impunity because stopping the rockets would require soldiers to make impossible decisions in the fog of war. Geez, I’m glad you’re not in a policy making position!
and Chris Hedges is about as reliable as Karl Rove on the other side. His point was that Sharon brought in Lebanese Christians to kill Palestinians. Without. One. Shred. of. Evidence.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
those are some funny shirts!!!!!
March 20th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Palestinian wombs are terrorist production facilities!!
March 20th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Yeah, because Ariel Sharon didn’t understand who the Phalangists were. That’s as credible as hiring the Boston Strangler to work at an orphanage and claim you brought him in to wash the childrens necks.
How long have you been typing this stuff? Do you ever really wish that the Palestinians would go back to suicide bombing, so your pathetic apology would sound more credible?
March 20th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Ed — you moron — that’s precisely the reason Sharon would never do it.
your problem is that you think the suicide bombings never happened. Or you think too much emphasis is given to them because, hey, it’s just jewish lives that are snuffed out.
Right Ed, You sick F*ck!
March 20th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
On Sharon sending in the Lebanese Christian Phalange militia into Sabra and Shatila, here is text of the order issued by Sharon in Beirut the day before the massacre bagan:
“Only one element, and that is the Israeli Defence Force, shall command the forces in the area. For the operation in the camps the Phalangist should be sent in.”
That’s from the Kahan Commission, run by the Israeli government, which investigated Sharon’s role in the massacre.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Is anyone really suprised. Blood thirsty Jews have existed since the dawn of time. Their people showed their colours when they put Jesus up on the cross and saved the criminal.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Do you know how ridiculous you sound? I’m getting the idea that you do, I’m embarrassed for you.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Ba is following the classic Hasbara primer:
March 20th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
For the slow folks Ed and Spokey –
My comment was related to Hedges’ contention that Sharon brought phalangists into GAZA. My point, which was clearly made, is that it is ridiculous to think that given what happened in Lebanon.
But way to follow clear reasoning guys. Is this what passes for a Liberal education?
March 20th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Be honest here, ba, is that you sockpuppeting an anti-semite? It’s pathetic if it is.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Ed,
Of course I sound ridiculous to you — you’re an echo chamber commenter in a middling blog. I’m actually bringing some evidence to the table.
Is that too much for you Ed? or are you satisfied making silly jokes a la comment #2?
I’m not embarrassed for you at all. I don’t think that highly of your intelligence.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
I haven’t seen that Hedges article in years, but I think you are insane. Where did Hedges allege that he brought phalangists to Gaza? That doesn’t even make sense and if you aren’t illiterate or making things up then Hedges lost his mind. I don’t remember reading that at all.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
You are cribbing this thing from honestreporting.com and fucking it up aren’t you?
March 20th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Anti-Zionist Hasbara
1. make silly jokes to make light of the conflict
2. accuse counterparty of being insane
3. ignore all facts presented by pro-Jewish life commenter
4. accuse commenter of being a shill for another organization
Is that about right Ed?
March 20th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
ba;
Whoops, my bad. Sharon has been involved with so many massacres where Phalangists kill Palestinians that I got my massacres mixed up and assumed you were talking about Sabra and Shatila.
So I then went back and re-read the Hedges article, and it’s not the case that “His point was that Sharon brought in Lebanese Christians to kill Palestinians” like you say. There’s actually one paragraph about Lebanese Christians, where locals say the voice over a loudspeaker that insults them in Arabic has a Lebanese accent. All of the mayhem he describes is carried out by the IDF. So good thing we got that cleared up.
Here’s the link again if you want to re-read it.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2001/10/0075814
March 20th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Geez Ed — you really are lazy aren’t you.
You wrote — I haven’t seen that Hedges article in years, but I think you are insane. Where did Hedges allege that he brought phalangists to Gaza? That doesn’t even make sense and if you aren’t illiterate or making things up then Hedges lost his mind.
The article said — The residents in the camp insist the Arabic accent is Lebanese. They believe that mercenaries from the South Lebanese Army, once a Christian proxy army for Israel and long a bitter foe of the Palestinians, have been integrated into the Israeli force. The word in Palestinian Arabic meaning “to shoot” – ahousak – is never heard over the loudspeakers but rather the Lebanese word in Arabic, atoohak. And the Palestinians in the camp say that they can hear Lebanese music coming from the guard posts.
from here — http://no2wars.wordpress.com/a-gaza-diary-chris-hedges/
So I guess Hedges has lost his mind no?
Ed — why don’t you take the 2 seconds to conduct the most basic research. Besides being a shill for Hamas, you’re a lazy idiot as well.
Take down baby!@
Peace out!!!
March 20th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
spokey — really, name one other? please.
maybe you can learn to read too. Hedges says that the SLA soldiers had been integrated into the IDF.
Thus, the notion that Sharon brought phalangists (from the SLA) into Gaza is exactly what Hedges claims.
Geez. Better Israel bashers please.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Re: Ba
Who here is certain that Ba is an online hasbara volunteer, that is forgetting his training and losing the cool, dispassionate approach his workshop facilitators recommended?
I am.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Melroy — I guess the insistence that i am insane and a shill is to be taken as the cool headed response of the educated Yglesias left wing commenter.
What’s the matter, a little heat too much for you?
March 20th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Chris Hedges knows that the SLA isn’t working in Gaza. He reported what he was told. It’s probably entirely accurate and the IDF guy picked up his Arabic in Lebanon.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Re ba
Just for the information of Mr. ba so he knows who he is conducting discussions with as he appears to be somewhat new to the blog, Mr. Ed Marshall is a man who believes that the State of Israel is illegal and must be dismantled and if the Jews therein are all massacred, that’s just tough noogies. In this regard, he is no different then fucktards like Norman Finkelstein and George Galloway (who by the way was just barred from entering Canada because of his support for terrorists). Be prepared for other shitheads like Mr. otto, Mr. Hack, Mr. Don Williams, Mr. fostert, Mr. El Cid, etc.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Chris Hedges knows that the SLA isn’t working in Gaza. He reported what he was told. It’s probably entirely accurate and the IDF guy picked up his Arabic in Lebanon.
Ed — do you honestly read what you write? He never mentions or insinuates that the IDF picked up an accent in Lebanon. Rather, he reported what he was told and gave no indication that it was otherwise. The only implication from his reporting is that Palestinians in gaza think the SLA has been integrated into the IDF. [and he's such a great reporter that he never followed this blockbuster comment]
You are not an impressive foe Ed. not impressive at all.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
SLC, you mean barred like Israel’s national security aide?
March 20th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Thanks SLC. I’ll hand these morons off to you.
btw, do you think Yglesias gives one whit for the type of anti-semite half-breed these posts attract? just wondering.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
And since everyone’s quoting Hedges… what about the sentence that precedes the one on Lebanese accents?
Or this one?
March 20th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
akak — umm, not so accuarate:
5). Israel entices children like “mice into a trap and murders them for sport.” One Palestinian was killed on June 17, when Hedges was in Gaza reporting this lurid passage. It was the same day that a Palestinian bomber had attacked Israelis nearby in Gaza, an event unmentioned by Hedges. According to The New York Times and other news agencies the Palestinian fatality occurred in the midst of violence – not as “sport.”
Chris Hedges, Harper’s, and Israel
Chris Hedges’ “A Gaza Diary: Scenes from the Palestinian Uprising,” published in the September/October edition of Harper’s, is severely marred by material errors and grave anti-Israel bias. Despite being an experienced journalist, Mr. Hedges repeatedly offers verbatim Palestinian claims of Israeli misconduct without providing either an Israeli response or independent corroborating information. CAMERA has now fact-checked numerous allegations made by the reporter and has found many to be false. Following are some of the major errors identified.
1). Hedges devoted most of his focus to events and conditions in the Palestinian towns of Khan Younis and nearby Mawasi in the Gaza Strip. He wrote:
In Mawasi many wells have gone completely dry, but the Israelis refuse to allow the villagers to drill new ones.
In fact, since the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of 1994 and Oslo II of 1995, Israel no longer has any civil authority within these camps. Yoram Barak, the spokesman for the Coordinator for Civilian Affairs in Gaza, stated that “Mawasi is completely under Palestinian civil control and Israel therefore has no authority to prevent or permit civilian activity such as the digging of wells there.”
Many Israeli water experts have lamented the rampant, unregulated Palestinian well- drilling that began after Israel ended its civil administration of Gaza. Such drilling has severely damaged the aquifers used by the Palestinian population, leading to infiltration of seawater.
2). Hedges wrote:
When I met a few days earlier with Osama al-Farra, the mayor of Khan Younis, he explained to me why the Israelis chose to build a settlement right between Mawasi and Khan Younis. “They have thirty-two wells. They built a pipeline in 1994 to carry the water into Israel. There are probably about 1000 people in the settlement next to the camp, but they consume one third of our water supply, though about 160,000 people live in Khan Younis.”
• First – according to Noah Kinarti, chief water adviser to Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, and Mekorot, Israel’s National Water Carrier, rather than 32 wells under one settlement, Israel has built a total of 26 wells under all 17 of their settlements in the Gaza Strip. Of those 26 wells, one is no longer in use, and five were given to the Palestinians in the context of the Oslo Accords. Today, Israel operates only 20 wells in the Gaza Strip.
• While Mayor al-Farra claimed the Israelis “built a pipeline in 1994 to carry water into Israel,” the truth is precisely the opposite. The Israeli Kissufim pipeline pumps water from Israel into Gaza; no water from Gaza is pumped into Israel.
Kinarti, who has also served as a water adviser to Ehud Barak, Yitzhak Mordecai, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin, and who negotiated with the Palestinians, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon over water rights in the region, said on October 17: “Israel pumps 5 million cubic meters (MCM) of water annually from underneath the Mawasi/Khan Younis area in the Gaza Strip. Of it, half is supplied to the Jewish communities of Gush Katif, and half is supplied to Khan Younis and Mawasi. Israel pumps an additional 5 MCM from within Israel to Gaza. 2.5 million is supplied to the Palestinians, and 2.5 million is supplied to the Jewish settlers in Gaza.”
Thus – while Israel uses 2.5 MCM for its own settlements from underneath Khan Younis and Mawasi, it returns it by giving the Palestinians an equal amount of water from within Israel.
• CAMERA also contacted the Palestinian Water Commissioner Nabil A-Sharif on October 26 and asked if Israel takes any water from Gaza into Israel. His response: “The pipeline leads from Israel into Gaza. Water is never taken from Gaza and brought into Israel. We sit down with the Israelis to discuss water issues every month, and this has never come up.” Asked specifically about Khan Younis mayor Osama al-Farra’s statement – repeated without qualification by Hedges – that Israel built a pipeline in 1994 to carry water into Israel, he said “let him prove it. This statement [by al-Farra] has no proof.”
In Oslo II, signed on September 28, 1995, Israel and the Palestinians agreed that Israel would supply the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip with an additional 5 MCM of water per year, but to date the Palestinians have not built the infrastructure for storage and distribution of this additional water Israel has agreed to provide them. “The Palestinians have repeatedly told us to wait until they are ready before supplying them with the extra 5 million cm” said Kinarti on October 17.
CAMERA checked this with Nabil a-Sharif as well. Sharif responded that this was true. He added; “We have to build the north-south carrier which will receive the extra 5 MCM, plus some desalinated water. This pipeline will be built with US assistance, and hopefully partially finished – during the year 2002. To be honest, we have asked the Israelis not to start pumping water until we’re ready.”
• Hedges also cited the assertion that:
There are probably about 1,000 people in the settlement next to the camp, but they consume one third of our water supply, though about 160,000 people live in Khan Younis.
This statement is blatantly deceptive; the mayor must know, and Hedges could have easily discovered by checking, that the Palestinians have 100 MCM of their own water pumped to Palestinian communities in the Gaza Strip annually. The water which Israel does use in the Khan Younis/Mawasi area – 2.5 MCM – which is replaced by another 2.5 MCM from within Israel – is not the sole source of the Palestinians’ water. They have their own sources elsewhere within the Gaza Strip. Why does Hedges omit this essential information?
3). Hedges wrote:
The Egyptians, who first controlled Gaza, would not allow the camp to expand, nor would the Israelis, who gained control of Gaza after the war in 1967.
Hedges is right about the first part. It is true the Egyptians did not allow any expansion or new building for the Palestinians during their rule of Gaza (1948-1967).
He is wrong in his second assertion. Many nations – including Israel – have tried to help improve the lot of Palestinian refugees. The PLO has consistently rebuffed these efforts – particularly Israel’s, preferring to keep Palestinians angry and destitute as a way of maintaining and focusing their rage on the state of Israel. Arab states abetted this, regularly introducing resolutions in the United Nations denouncing Israel for seeking to move Palestinians out of squalid refugee camps. UNRWA’s Ralph Garroway said in August 1958:
The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.
Hedges himself is well aware of these realities. In correspondence in February 1994 to his deputy editor at The New York Times, Steven R. Weisman, Hedges wrote:
The PLO did resist Israeli attempts to move Palestinians to housing units. And many people do charge the PLO with keeping Palestinians in squalor to prove a political point. (This correspondence came in response to a 1994 CAMERA query about another Hedges article on Gaza.)
If these facts were known to Hedges seven years ago, why did he falsify them in his October story?
Despite the opposition of the PLO and Arab countries toward improving the Palestinians’ lot, Israel did manage some modest improvements and expansion of the Palestinians’ housing needs in Khan Younis. In the Al-Amal “A” neighborhood Israel built 500 apartment units at the beginning of the 1980’s. In the Al-Amal “B” neighborhood Israel apportioned over 2000 plots of 250 square meters each for both private and public use, also at the beginning of the 1980’s. (Yoram Barak, Spokesman for the Coordinator for Civil Affairs in Gaza).
During the Israeli administration, despite tension, terrorism and war, authorities also did add new infrastructure, including roads, electricity, a sewage system and new schools.
Hedges, while he mentions that Israel “gained control of the camp after 1967,” neglects to mention – purposefully, it appears – that since the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of 1994, Israel no longer has any authority over the camp of Khan Younis. The Palestinian Authority does. If the camp has not been able to expand since 1994, this is solely because of the Palestinian Authority.
4). In an exceptionally incendiary passage, Hedges claims:
Children have been shot in other countries I have covered – death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo – but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.
• First, the sheer malice of this comment speaks for itself; if the Israelis, with the most powerful army in the Middle East enticed “children like mice into a trap and murdered them for sport,” why was only one person killed on June 17 – as tragic as that was – when Hedges wrote his “diary” entry on the events in question?
Moreover, Hedges’ account is at odds with those in other media, including his home publication, the New York Times. Reporting the events of June 17, Times correspondent Douglas Frantz wrote: “The Israeli military said soldiers had been under attack with stones and bottles” when they opened fire on “a crowd trying to tear down surrounding Jewish settlements in Gush Katif.”
Other news agencies reported that the Palestinians began throwing stones at soldiers in an Israeli settlement near Khan Younis after an attempted suicide bombing near Dahaniya in Gaza the same day. Margot Dudkevitch of the Jerusalem Post reported:
Near the entrance to Dahaniya, soldiers became suspicious of a man driving a donkey cart. As he approached the soldiers, the man jumped from the cart and detonated explosives hidden in it…IDF sappers detonated the remaining bombs that failed to explode, among them four gas canisters and two mines.
Soldiers on duty, already on edge, were aware that innocent looking Palestinians had tried to blow up other Israeli soldiers elsewhere in the Gaza Strip the same day. But Hedges did not even bother to report in his “diary” of events the attempted suicide bombing aimed at killing Israelis.
Similarly, an armed Palestinian gang shot and killed a 12 year old Palestinian on June 16 in the town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Hedges, who was in Gaza at the time, makes no mention of this either. On June 18 it was reported in The Jerusalem Post:
Yesterday, Palestinians, who had blamed Israel for the death of another 12 year-old boy near Rafah on Saturday, admitted that the boy had been killed by an armed opposition faction operating in Rafah. According to reports, a dispute broke out between Palestinian security officials and an armed gang that shot at soldiers near Rafah Yam. The Palestinian security officials demanded that the armed gang leave, and as they drove off gang members began shooting at random, mortally wounding Suliman Massari, 12, who was in a car, and wounding several other passengers.
• Notably, Thomas L. Friedman, a colleague of Hedges’ at The New York Times, wrote an op-ed (“Saudi Royals and Reality”, October 16, 2001) with what might have been an allusion to Chris Hedges’ falsehoods and deceptions in “A Gaza Diary.”
[T]o suggest that Israel is slaughtering Palestinians for sport, as if a war were not going on there, which Israel did not court, in which civilians on both sides are being killed… – is just a lie.
Friedman added that; “Normally such casual lying doesn’t bother me. It’s a staple of Middle East politics, but this particular version is dangerous, because it masks a deeper lie that can hurt us. I call it “the virgin birth problem.” Friedman was referring to a lack of Arab accountability not only regarding the Palestinian violence plaguing Israel for the past year but the larger problem of Arab hatred for the West which was brought home on September 11.
5) Hedges claims Israeli soldiers shoot Palestinian children with guns equipped “with silencers.” According to senior IDF officers, including IDF spokesman Olivier Rafowitz, silencers are used only by special forces troops in close combat situations, not by conventional troops in guard-duty or riot-control circumstances. In addition, these same officers have stated that the attachment used to fire rubber bullets might appear – to a non-expert – to be a silencer. Finally, one might ask, since silencers are employed for stealth operations in which the use of a gun is intended to be concealed, why would Israeli soldiers use them openly where observers could see them?
6). Hedges presents all Palestinian fathers and father-figures as strongly opposed to their children becoming martyrs or suicide bombers. Thus, Faqawi, a Palestinian father of two, tells Hedges on June 16:
I can never say that the way to fight Israelis is to blow ourselves up. I can’t allow my children to think like this.
On June 18, he talks to Murad Abdel Rahman, whose son was killed while confronting Israelis:
‘This is what I worked so hard to prevent,’ he says, his voice hoarse and low…’I made him promise he would not go the dunes to throw rocks.’
A Palestinian mother interviewed the same day says:
I tell the boys it is useless, throwing stones and becoming a martyr.
On June 20 a Palestinian man is quoted as telling Hedges:
I can’t stand to see the children get shot…I don’t care about the others. But when the children get shot I cry. I can’t take it.
Finally, Hedges describes and then quotes a Hamas sheikh who opposes children fighting Israeli troops.
[E]ven the sheikh has used his time during Friday prayers to implore the young boys not to go out on the dunes…”I know that every father tries to keep his children away from the fence,” he says. “The teachers and the imams tell the children not to go. When I preach in the mosque I tell them to stay away.”
Hedges does not quote one Palestinian adult supporting their children becoming “martyrs.” Yet for years not only Hamas but the Palestinian Authority has exhorted children via its media, schools, mosques and political statements to become martyrs – to die for the sake of Palestine. With regard to the extreme expression of martyrdom in the form of suicide bombing, a June 2001 poll – unmentioned by Hedges – found 76% of Palestinians support suicide bombings. (“The Palestinian Center for Public Opinion,” based in the West Bank and directed by Dr. Nabil Kukali. The survey was taken between May 24-26. The margin of error was 4%.)
Does the omission mean Hedges is unaware of such views among the Palestinians? In fact, we know otherwise from his own writing. Seven months prior to “A Gaza Diary,” in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs, Hedges wrote very differently about the Palestinians. While extremely critical of Israel, he did not spare the Palestinians either.
In an article entitled “The New Palestinian Revolt,” Palestinian parents are quoted by Hedges in support of their children becoming martyrs. The reporter’s interview with a Palestinian woman contained the following:
‘Tell the man what you want to be,’ said Hyam Temraz to her two-year-old son, Abed, as she peeped out of the slit of a black veil.
‘A martyr,’ the child answered.
She said that another son had been talking about liberating Palestine since he was four.
He has always told me that he would be a martyr and that one day I would dig his grave.
Hedges spoke to a Palestinian man, Nezzar Rayan, in that same article:
Today, his three sons – ages 12, 15, and 16 – daily join the youths who throw rocks at Israeli checkpoints. All three, according to their father, strive to be one thing: martyrs for Palestine.
‘I pray only that God will choose them,’ he said.
In Harper’s these voices endorsing martyrdom have been eliminated. Hedges has evidently made a conscious choice to omit information damaging to the Palestinian cause.
7). Alleging further murders by Israel, Hedges wrote:
I watch Jihad Abu Mousa, twenty-two, kick at a few pieces of rubble. He is morose and silent…On January 29 his twenty-three-year-old brother was shot dead by Israeli soldiers, while, Jihad says, playing a game of soccer.
• A Nexis search reveals that one Palestinian was killed on January 29, Muhammad Abu Musa, and he was not “playing a game of soccer.” On January 30, Agence France Presse reported: “Hamas’ military wing, Ezzadin al-Qassam, claimed responsibility during the funeral for a Palestinian shot dead by Israeli soldiers the day before at the Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. Around 10,000 people attended the funeral of Mohammed Abu Musa, 21, many shouting ‘death to Israel’ and praising both Hamas and the militia wing of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.”
That is, Muhammad Abu Musa, brother of Jihad Abu Musa, was a member of Hamas.
On January 30 The New York Times reported that “a Palestinian was killed in a clash in the Gaza Strip.” The same day, The Chicago Tribune reported “Israeli troops shot dead a 21-year old Palestinian man in a confrontation in the Gaza Strip.” Neither The Times nor The Tribune mentioned that Abu Musa was killed “playing a game of soccer.”
The Jerusalem Post, which generally covers clashes in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip in greater depth than American papers, wrote on January 30: “…violence continued in the Gaza Strip yesterday, with Palestinians claiming that 21-year-old Mohammed Abu Mussa was killed near Khan Younis during an exchange of fire with soldiers. (Note that while Hedges reports the age of Mohammed Abu Mussa as 23, all other media surveyed put it at 21.) The IDF Spokesman said soldiers shot and killed an armed Palestinian who had loaded his gun and aimed at them.”
Even “Adameer,” the Palestinian web site, and B’tselem, the Israeli group highly critical of Israel, do not claim that Muhammad Abu Mussa was shot by Israeli soldiers while playing soccer.
Indeed, no news source reported Muhammad Abu Musa was killed while playing soccer; rather the accounts told of his involvement in violent confrontation with Israelis.
Ariel Sharon did not visit the al-Aqsa Mosque. He walked on the Temple Mount, the plaza where the first and second Jewish Temples stood, the holiest site in Judaism. The al-Aqsa Mosque is located on the large plaza, but Sharon did not enter or visit it. Hedges’ omission of the meaning and sanctity of the Temple Mount to Jews and his inaccurate account of Sharon’s actions falsely suggest Sharon intruded on an exclusively Islamic site.
9) Hedges stated: “From 1987 to 1993, during the first intifada, Hamas targeted only Israeli soldiers and settlements. It began to attack individual Israeli civilians after a Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, gunned down twenty-nine Muslim worshipers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.”
Hamas targeted civilians before Goldstein’s shooting of Muslims in February 1994. For example, on July 2, 1993 Hamas terrorists attacked a Jerusalem bus killing two and wounding two others. They used assault rifles and carried bombs concealed in bags. One woman was murdered on the bus and another when the fleeing Hamas members seized a car, then shot the driver and threw her out of the vehicle. Hamas murders of civilians in Israel did not begin, as Hedges seems to imply, as a consequence of Baruch Goldstein’s shooting Arab civilians.
In summary, the material errors identified are as follows:
1). “Israel does not allow Palestinian villagers in Mawasi to drill new wells.” Israel, as stated, has no jurisdiction over the matter of well-drilling in Palestinian-controlled territories, of which Mawasi and Khan Younis are a part.
2). “Israel has 32 wells” under one settlement between the Palestinian towns of Mawasi and Khan Younis. In fact, Israel operates only 20 wells, and they are under 17 settlements.
3). Israel “built a pipeline in 1994 to carry water into Israel.” Israel does not take any water from Gaza into Israel – but rather supplies the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip with water.
4). Israel “would not allow the [Khan Younis] camp to expand.” Israel did initiate a modest expansion program in the camp in the 1980’s and was consistently thwarted by the PLO, as were other nations, in efforts to do more.
5). Israel entices children like “mice into a trap and murders them for sport.” One Palestinian was killed on June 17, when Hedges was in Gaza reporting this lurid passage. It was the same day that a Palestinian bomber had attacked Israelis nearby in Gaza, an event unmentioned by Hedges. According to The New York Times and other news agencies the Palestinian fatality occurred in the midst of violence – not as “sport.”
6). Israeli “soldiers shoot [Palestinian children] with silencers.” The Israeli military denies this allegation.
7) Hedges quoted only Palestinians who say they oppose their children becoming “martyrs” – and dying for the sake of Palestine. This is a highly misleading characterization, as we know from Hedges’ own writing in the January/ February 2001 issue of Foreign Affairs.
8). “Mohammed [Abu Musa] was shot dead by Israeli soldiers while… playing a game of soccer.” Mohammad Abu Mousa, a Hamas member, was reported in numerous news outlets as having died in a violent confrontation with Israelis.
9) “The latest intifada erupted…when Ariel Sharon …visited the al-Aqsa Mosque…” Sharon did not visit the al-Aqsa Mosque.
10) “Hamas targeted only Israeli soldiers and settlements” before “Baruch Goldstein gunned own twenty-nine Muslim worshipers…” Hamas targeting of civilians in Israel pre- dated Goldstein.
Chris Hedges’ account was marred by other serious deficiencies, including the gross omission of context with regard to violence against Israelis in Gaza – failing to mention there had been nearly 3000 Palestinian attacks launched between October 2000 and June 2001 – and the total absence of any Israeli voice to challenge specifically the grave accusations against its people and policies.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
OK, so we’re getting closer. How about we agree on the following statement: “Hedges says that Gazans suspect that Phalangists from Lebanon are working with the IDF in Gaza. However, he does not say that this is the case, or that the Phalange was brought in to Gaza by Sharon in order to kill Gazans. Hedges describes various murders of Palestinians by the IDF and does not say anywhere that Phalangists were the triggerman.”
Jeez. Now that we cleared up that fascinating point, back to the larger post. I still haven’t heard you say thing one of substance showing that these or other murders of Palestinian civilians by the IDF never happened. You’ve cut and pasted from various reports that some Palestinians have committed acts of terrorism, and this is no doubt correct. I almost experienced one of them first hand. But NOWHERE am I seeing anything that excuses the type of carnage that the IDF is inflicting on innocent civilians.
Israel is doing two things in the territories. First, they are protecting themselves against terror. I can’t say I get particularly broken up when some Hamas bomber is killed. But they are going about it with such brutality that of course they are creating as many enemies as they kill. Israel has been beating on the Palestinians over 40 years now. When is the deterrent supposed to kick in exactly? Plus it leads directly and predictably to events such as the one Matt is referencing.
Second, they are stealing land. The settlements don’t have the slightest bit to do with preventing terrorism. Israel is guilty of a massive, longstanding campaign of theft that is about as blatent and well documented as anything in the world. And of course, this creates even more enemies, which makes the first goal (preventing terror) even harder.
Show me where this is wrong.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Oooh, cut and paste job from CAMERA, the guys who tried figure out a way to game Wikipedia, now I definitely believe you ba….
March 20th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Mr. Ed Marshall is a man who believes that the State of Israel is illegal and must be dismantled and if the Jews therein are all massacred, that’s just tough noogies. In this regard, he is no different then fucktards like Norman Finkelstein and George Galloway
I don’t really give a damn what arrangements the Palestinian Arab and Israeli populations make. I don’t want any part of it. I want the U.S. position to mimic China on Israel. I have ideas about what would be fair, but it’s not my skin in the game.
Norman Finkelstein is a zionist, and not even a cultural zionist of the “homeland” school, but a standard issue green line, nationalist, zionist who opposes any form of Palestinian resistance right out to boycotts and divestment campaigns.
George Galloway is indeed an anti-zionist and you have probably summed up his position mostly accurately. I don’t think that makes him Satan and The Minion of The Arabs the way he’s usually dressed up, but whatever.
That you can’t tell the difference, or be
March 20th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Power to the refuseniks.
March 20th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
That sounds like a serious problem, what of all the Jews who are in Isreal. How about we offer them assylum in the US. If the Arabs let them live peacefully in Palestine, then great, if not they can flee to the US or Canada. If they stay and chose to fight the Arabs, then I could give a fuck less if they get destroyed, they would be trying to illegally retake a country they illegally took in the first place.
March 20th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Ba’s rantings might usefully (and informatively) be truncated.
Is it possible that having so thoroughly lost the information war on Gaza and the West Bank annexation the new Hasbara policy is to simply destroy all blog threads relating to them with copy and paste diarrhoea? It is a hopeful sign of their disarray I suppose but the scrolling could grow tiresome.
As a description for this kind of indiscriminate copy and pasting and straw man kommando deployment I would like to suggest “Shout and Bore.”
March 20th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Unfortunately, I suspect that the pervading atmosphere in Israel at this time is one in which conscience is attacked as weakness. I remember that this was the atmosphere in the U.S. for a period between 9/11 and, I don’t know, mid-2005 or the like. I don’t know, but I have a feeling that this is how Israel is now. Many cheer on the war criminals, just as many British cheered on Reginald Dyer’s massacre in Amritsar, many Peruvians cheered on Fujimori doing “whatever it took” to take down the Shining Path, and many Americans cheered on the torturers of Guantánamo Bay.
We’ll have to see how long Israelis can maintain their culture of suppression of the conscience.
March 20th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Re Ed Marshall
Mr. Finkelstein is in no way, shape, form, or regard a Zionist. The writings of Zionists are not posted on such forums as stormfornt.
Re Jimboslice
If the Arabs ever get the upper hand, there won’t be any Jews currently in Israel who will be able to leave. Palestine will look like Nazi Germany, which should make fuckface Jimboslice happy.
Re ba
Mr. ba hasn’t heard from such goatfuckers as Don Williams or Richard Steven Hack as yet, who are even worse then Ed Marshall. Mr. ba is absolutely correct. Mr. Yglesias attracts Israel bashers and anti-semites in droves, indicating his own leanings.
Just as an example, these cretins delight in bashing Israel for the deaths of 1300 Palestinians in the Gaza operation but condone and even applaud the deaths of 2500 Chinese dissidents at Tienanmen Square while defending Charles Freeman.
March 20th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
It’s a shame anti-semites have infiltrated the israeli army.
March 20th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Re SLC
So let us support a country where the Jews can be the oppressors!!! Fantastic advice SLC, because if there is one thing the Jews are good at it is selective moral outrage. There is a reason that in country after country, century after century they wear out their welcome. And I will give you a hint, its not us, its you!
March 20th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
You are a fucking moron, Jimbo. Really. It’s not the first time I’ve said this, but it’s the same goddamn reductive thinking over and over again.
As far as I can figure out, I’m way off in anti-semite land. I have no way of appeasing the faux anti-anti-semites that I would find palatable, and I don’t think your outburst is dangerous, I think it’s pitiful and embarassing. I’m embarassed for you.
March 21st, 2009 at 12:16 am
Damn, somebody’s scared shitless of this article.
Good. You should be.
March 21st, 2009 at 12:18 am
They don’t care about slaughtered civilians – hell, they openly applaud the idea throughout the thread – but they sure do care about getting caught, don’t they?
March 21st, 2009 at 12:19 am
American assholes, commenting on the blog of a guy who supported the invasion of Iraq for no good reason whatsoever, judging the morality of Israel.
FUCK YOU, MOTHER@#$&#%&#.
Seriously, Americans arguing about whether American dollars should support Israeli atrocities is like Mafioso arguing whether its “honorable” to support neighborhood toughs.
March 21st, 2009 at 12:23 am
Uh, you’ll find pretty universal opposition to the invasion of Iraq around here, chief. Nice try, though.
March 21st, 2009 at 12:56 am
Another charming Israel thread.
March 21st, 2009 at 1:39 am
This has been going on for decades. The IDF and the Israeli spooks have been killing people at random forever, when they aren’t arresting them, torturing them and holding them forever without charges just like Guantanamo.
This is just the LATEST series of allegations.
Hey, SLC! How about this one?
Death to Zionists!
Happy?
Israel needs to go away. Now. One state solution, sideline all the Zionist freaks. If they don’t like it, they can emigrate back to Germany and join the Nazi Party where they learned their current trade from anyway.
Fuck them.
March 21st, 2009 at 3:38 am
The latest GIYUS and Hasbara tactic on view here.
When faced with israeli soldiers testifying as to atrocities and war crimes not only condoned, but encouraged, by their officers, the usual tactics of diverting the argument, creating straw man argument, ad hominem attacks and alleging anti-semitism are abandoned in favour of a strategy of dominating the thread with interminable copy and paste screeds that make a normal discussion impossible.
Still, none of these GIYUS and Hasbara trolls have addressed the soldiers’ statements or lessened the impact of them.
March 21st, 2009 at 7:37 am
Re ba
Since Mr. Richard Steven Hack has chosen to pollute this thread with his presence and Mr. ba appears to be somewhat new to this blog, let me introduce Mr. Hack. Mr. Hack is a convicted bank robber who spent 9 years in the federal birdcage in Leavenworth, Ka. for his criminal activities. Mr. Hack walked into a bank in San Francisco with a loaded gun, lined up the tellers and informed them that they had a choice of emptying their cash drawers or being terminated with extreme prejudice. Shortly thereafter, he was captured while on board a city bus attempting to make his getaway. In addition, Mr. Hack, on this blog, has advocated the assassination of police officers and made threats against the life of fascist talk show host Michael Savage. In other words, Mr. Hack is a degenerate psychopath.
March 21st, 2009 at 8:53 am
Uh, you’ll find pretty universal opposition to the invasion of Iraq around here, chief. Nice try, though
I understand that. But supporters and opponents alike don’t question the legitimacy of the American state, or even its military as an institution, based on the conduct of the Iraq war.
We’re quite clear, most of us, that the Israeli occupation is a really bad thing. But when American use Israeli *actions* to support their view of the legitimacy of the enterprise, they’re adopting a standard they certainly never apply to their own country.
To be fair, Matt was very clear in his post that there’s no indication Israel’s actions are any worse than other states in the same situation. The commenters just blithely ignore that and there is this pro and con discussion about whether grandmothers can be treated as suicide bombers.
Also, Israel’s American supporters do pretend that Israel conducts its military operation in some highly moral way. But that’s essentially because Americans pretend that their *own* military is held to some high standards of proportionality etc. Since “Israel sucks as much as the US” is not winning PR slogan, it changes to “Israel is as honorable as the US”.
March 21st, 2009 at 9:18 am
@ba (”the palestinians use children!!!”)
you might spend some time reading about Betar.
March 21st, 2009 at 10:18 am
For the most part, very few take exception to the legitimacy of Israel’s existence or its defense forces.
But having said that there are significant differences between the situation of Israel in Gaza and America in Iraq.
In many ways, the American occupation in Iraq is far more limited and rather more benign. True, America has destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure, killed a million people, created four million refugees, looted the country and exacerbated internal tensions to the point of civil war.
On the other hand. The American occupation is of much briefer duration and will end within a few years. The Americans have some respect for and some intent to support and revitalize Iraq’s civil institutions and rebuild infrastructure. The American’s may have some deep scheme to steal control of Iraq’s oil, but there’s no ongoing campaign to steal their land.
It’s really not worth speaking meaningfully about Israel/Iraq comparisons.
For all the outrageous huffery and puffery of people like Ba and SLC, there really are fundamental questions that have to be asked about the legitimacy of Israel.
It’s a state based on stolen land. No question about that. The original owners were dispossessed. They and their descendants sit in refugee camps around the world as a stateless people.
Now, you can argue that God gave the land to Israel. But if so, I think that God is going to have to show up and settle this in person, verify that his signature on this deed is authentic.
Or you can argue that all states exist on stolen land, or at least conquered territory. Which is somewhat true. You can even point out that the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and much of Latin America are ’settler states’ founded upon the displacement, extermination or eviction of aboriginal populations. Which is true. But that evades the problem. Israel was founded after territorial conquest and settlement ceased to be legitimate.
Nevertheless, Israel’s right to exist is not questionned. It is an organized state of seven million people.
Yet questions of legitimacy remain, and in particular, the legitimacy of its treatment of a subject and enslaved people.
Sadly, people like Ba and SLC bring nothing to the discussion, except barking madness. SLC’s only ‘constructive’ offering is genocide.
The discussion endlessly circles back to the same talking points.
In the end, without some fundamental change, the matter will be decided by demographics and economics.
March 21st, 2009 at 11:15 am
How many CAMERA points did ‘ba’ receive for his voluminous propagandizing on this thread, I wonder?
March 21st, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Skeptic, I find little to disagree with your post. The one thing I would disagree with is this.
In many ways, the American occupation in Iraq is far more limited and rather more benign.
On the other hand. The American occupation is of much briefer duration and will end within a few years.
Precisely because the US invaded a country which poses little threat to the US, no matter what the US does there. When it comes to its own backyard, the US doesn’t give up until it completely extinguishes whatever it perceives as a threat e.g Panama, Haiti, Nicaragua etc.
I’m not saying the Israelis should be able to do the same, not at all. Its just the warm glow of self-righteousness from Americans pointing the finger, that gets to me sometimes.
March 21st, 2009 at 1:01 pm
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072466.html
A T-shirt printed at the request of an IDF soldier in the sniper unit reading ‘I shot two kills.’
The T-shirt has a drawing of a pregnant Palestinian woman.
March 21st, 2009 at 2:17 pm
BA, you’re a selfrighteous moron. The Phalangists are NOT the same as the SLA. The SLA did not commit the Sabra and Shatila massacre (outside Beirut), that was the Phalangists and Lebanese Forces– different from the SLA, although both were allied with Israel. The SLA operated exclusively in Israel’s “security zone” in the south and was a proxy army in every way for the Israelis. The Phalangists are a political movement (with a militia arm) that have existed since their founder Pierre Gemayel went to the Olympics in Nazi Germany and wanted to start his own fascist movement. Everybody knows that some of the SLA members who fled to Israel after the 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon (and are now citizens) have been integrated into the IDF or work for them as translators. Thats no surprise at all.
March 21st, 2009 at 2:53 pm
I’d like to hear more from Ba on the subject of “half-breeds.”
March 21st, 2009 at 5:43 pm
SLC,
To add to your admirable description, Mr. Hack appears to have carried out said armed robbery in part to feed his smack habit. And also, in part, to indulge his Nihilist philosophy, in which practising Jews and Christians are superstitious Chimpanzees who will shortly be exterminated by a master race of Trans-Humans. In short, Mr. Hack’s bank robbery was a logical extension of his Nihilist beliefs. What remains puzzling is why civilized people should listen to the nihilist ravings of a c*cksucker p*ssy like Mr. Hack.
March 21st, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Hey BA,
We keep hearing from Israeli hacks about Hamas using “human shields.” I’ve never seen evidence of this but I certainly have seen photos of IDF thugs putting Palestinian kids on the front of their APCs and using them as human shields. There is plenty of evidence that these same IDF thugs snatch a Palestinian and force them to be the first to walk into a house that the IDF thugs want to vandalize or occupy.
You oppose suicide bombings and so do I. Perhaps you would prefer that the Palestinians have the same type of weapons as do the Israelis. Lets give the Palestinians Apace helicopters, advanced weaponry, tanks, APCs, flechette missiles, white phosphorus etc and even the playing field. Then they wouldn’t have to resort to suicide bombings.
As long as Israel continues with its brutal occupation, with its ongoing theft of Palestinian lands and water resources, with the bulldozing of thousands of Palestinian homes (at least 11,000 since 1967) , with the murder of stone throwing kids resisting the entrance of Israeli thugs into their village, with the destruction of Palestinian olive and fruits trees (one million in the last several years, with the imprisonment of thousands of kidnapped Palestinians there will be no end to the conflict.
Israel was born in sin with the ethnic cleansing and dispossession of at least 750,000 Palestinian Arabs. How they expected to live happily ever after is beyond me.
And lest you doubt the ethnic cleansing, read Ilan Pappe’s The Cleansing of Palestine.
Also, as an American Jew I have as evidence the actions of a California born member of my family who joined the Haganah and in early 1948 participated in driving a village of Palestinian Arabs at gunpoint from their homes into Lebanon. Once the village was ethnically cleansed the land was taken over by the Jews and the true owners of the land were forbidden from returning.
Please don’t show your complete ignorance by saying that the Palestinians could have had their state in 1947. The real truth is that David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was not pleased with partition and said that when the Jews became strong as the result of becoming a state they would expand to the entire area. I have no doubt that within a year or two, had the Palestinians accepted the loss of much of their homeland, that the Jewish state would have fomented an incident that would have lead to Israel invading and occupying the Palestinian state.
April 16th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Good morning. I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
I am from Iceland and also now’m speaking English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: “The article also provides information.”
Best regards
, Dorset.