HRW and Hamas
Since Human Rights Watch’s work in the Middle East and North Africa is driven by the organization’s anti-Israel agenda, clearly this letter urging Hamas leadership to take seriously the allegations made against their group in the Goldstone Report and to implement Goldstone’s recommendations can’t actually have happened. For that matter, since Goldstone himself was part of the very same vast anti-Israel agenda his own report can’t possibly have said that stuff.
That said, if we pretend that HRW really did issue the statement posted on their website, it highlights an interesting dynamic. Clearly, in the real world Hamas is not an organization that’s interested in human rights or the laws of war. But if you read the article you can see that Hamas is at least an organization that’s interested in pretending to be interested in these things and gets into a dialogue with human rights groups:
Prior to the vote, a Hamas Foreign Ministry adviser, Ahmad Yusuf, had said that Hamas “will try to do our best” to investigate rocket attacks against Israeli population centers. Yusuf also claimed that Hamas had only intended its rocket attacks to hit Israeli “military targets,” rather than Israeli civilians, and that “maybe some of these rockets missed their targets” because they were “primitive weapons.”
That’s pretty transparently nonsense:
In its letter to Haniya, Human Rights Watch recalled repeated statements by Hamas officials and fighters indicating an intent to direct the rockets toward civilian targets and asked Hamas to clarify its stance on the issue. A June 11, 2006 statement from the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas armed wing, for example, said that in response to an Israeli attack that targeted Palestinian fighters, the group had carried out a rocket attack against the Israeli town of Sderot and would continue attacking Sderot “until its residents flee in horror. We will turn Sderot into a ghost town.”
The point here is that Hamas seems to believe that its own legitimacy and interests can, in fact, be damaged by the perception that it is violating the laws of war and attracting the disapproval of human rights monitors. What’s more, Hamas is clearly very interested in pressing human rights claims against Israel. But that, of course, opens them up to pressure to acknowledge the criticisms of their own conduct being made by those very same group. HRW grew out of the Helsinki Watch concept, which was aimed at holding the Communist Bloc to account for violations of agreements they had plainly signed in bad faith. At the time, that was regarded by many as a futile and pointless task, but in retrospect most people now acknowledge that their work was important and effective.
93 Responses to “HRW and Hamas”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
October 26th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
One could view this as a pretty effective bait’n’switch tactic, even if unintended, to have HRW have the condemning report against Hamas, have Westerners and Middle Easterners pick up on the Israeli human rights violations, while the Hamas violations were not as prominently publicized, and then catch Hamas with their own words and resulting cognitive dissonance, turning the focus back on them (and it should remain on both actors in this tragedy, though Israel’s total violations are much, much greater, and more disappointing because they are supposed to be a democracy with a stake in liberal civilization and sworn to uphold human rights and the laws of war, especially since these laws were promulgated in many ways over the events of WWII, leading to the creation of their state).
October 26th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
It’s my belief that in order to prevent Hamas from attacking citizens and then using the long-acknowledged “primitive weapons” defense, we should arm them with laser guided missiles. Any further attacks that hit civilians would then clearly be because that’s where they are aiming. Ipso facto, no more civilian deaths unless that’s what they are trying for and if they are war crimes. Totally busted.
October 26th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
LoL, Brian. If weapons like that existed, a whole lot of nations would be in trouble.
October 26th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
It’s amusing in a profoundly sardonic way to see the self-deception involved in HRW’s letter to Hamas. Note the following:
In its letter to Haniya, Human Rights Watch recalled repeated statements by Hamas officials and fighters indicating an intent to direct the rockets toward civilian targets and asked Hamas to clarify its stance on the issue. A June 11, 2006 statement from the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas armed wing, for example, said that in response to an Israeli attack that targeted Palestinian fighters, the group had carried out a rocket attack against the Israeli town of Sderot and would continue attacking Sderot “until its residents flee in horror. We will turn Sderot into a ghost town.”
Now is this not a plain statement of the fact that Hamas intended to target civilians from the beginning? Why is it necessary to ask Hamas to “to clarify its stance”?
Anyone with the energy to look up Wiki under “Gaza War” will see that Israel took trouble to use precision-guided weapons, while Hamas knew that its rockets were very inaccurate.
October 26th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
It doesn’t matter. Peoples under colonial domination are entitled to the right of self-determination, to restore to themselves that right by any means at their disposal.
And the Israeli civilians have the right – and the obligation – to comply with international law: to end the occupation and accept a just solution to the refugee problem. As long as they refuse to do it, they have no reason to complain, none whatsoever.
October 26th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
abb1:
There are such things as laws of war which are in effect whatever sort of war is being fought. I would be interested in knowing where your phrase “any means at their disposal” comes from.
October 26th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Here.
This is not a war, there aren’t two states with two armies. This is a struggle of a people under colonial and alien domination to restore to themselves the right of self-determination.
October 26th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
I don’t see anything in the link you gave that grants “any means at their disposal.”
October 26th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Matt:
That’s just plain silly. I suppose in some crudely Machiavellian way you could speculate on the remote possibility that Hamas sees their “interests” at stake, but their legitimacy?
How can you be so insightful about the cultural illiteracy of American policymakers with respect to things like Afghani or Iraqi self-concept and be so blindingly culturally illiterate about Hamas’s?
There is zero chance that Hamas sees one iota of it’s legitimacy as being in the slightest bit dependent on the approval or disapproval of human rights monitors.
October 26th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Try using ctrl-F.
October 26th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Who was it exactly that thought Helsinki Watch was pointless? I seem to recall their work being treated with considerable respect across the U.S. political spectrum. It was Americas Watch, the branch of the same group that was focused on Latin America, whose reports were often dismissed–because they were looking at human rights abuses committed mainly by U.S. allies.
October 26th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Bottomfish,
What you’re missing is the fact that HRW communicates in diplomat-ese. A few helpful phrases:
“…consider to be a hostile act…” = We’re going to bomb you.
“…serious consequences…” We’re going to bomb the living crap out of you.
“…grave consequences…” We’re going to bomb you until your country is a graveyard.
“…clarify your position…” You are so busted, and we’re going to incredibly polite as we draw the world’s attention to that fact.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Touche. However that is only a UN declaration and such declarations are not in themselves international law. I will quote from Malcolm N Shaw, International Law, 5th edition, pp. 1040-1041. This is a discussion of civil wars. The discussion is lengthy but here is the point concerning the status of insurgents:
“The rebels are not mere criminals but they are not recognized as belligerents. Accordingly, the other states are at liberty to define their legal relationship with them….these concepts of insurgency and belligerency are lacking in clarity and are extremely subjective. The absence of clear criteria, particularly with regard to the concept of insurgency, has led to a great deal of confusion. The international law rules dealing with civil wars depend upon the categorisation by third states of the relative status of the two sides to the conflict. ..In practice states very rarely make an express acknowledgment as to the status of the parties to the conflict, precisely in order to retain as wide a room for manoeuvre as possible. This means that the relevant legal rules cannot really operate as intended in classical law and it becomes extremely difficult to decide whether a particular intervention is justified or not.”
Of course you may choose to see the rights of Hamas as unlimited, but others may not, and don’t.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Who was it exactly that thought Helsinki Watch was pointless? I seem to recall their work being treated with considerable respect across the U.S. political spectrum.
Conservatives. And the so-called “neocons”. Robert Gates admitted to being wrong about Helsinki Watch. He was a in the CIA at the time.
There is zero chance that Hamas sees one iota of it’s legitimacy as being in the slightest bit dependent on the approval or disapproval of human rights monitors.
That what conservatives were saying about the Soviets and Helsinki Watch, but it did encourage those in the eatern bloc who wanted an end to the soviet system.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Joe from Lowell,
When a nation says “clarify your position,” it might mean “you are busted.” When HRW says it, it means “please don’t kill our staff,” which is what Hamas would do if HRW used stronger language.
When they do use stronger language against Israel, however, it is a tacit admission that the IDF has not sunk to Hamas’s level.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Yay! We haven’t sunk to Hamas’ level!
We’re number 136! We’re number 136! Take THAT, Uzbekistan!
October 26th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Well, I’d add that the IDF has a long way to go before sinking to Hamas’s level, like, say timing attacks to 7:55 AM to maximize the chance of killing kids, the way Hamas times its rockets into Sderot, but that would cause abb1 to have a stroke and sue me.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
I don’t see the rights of Hamas as limited or unlimited, Hamas is nothing, temporary phenomenon. There was no Hamas before Zionist colonization, there will be no Hamas after Zionists go away.
There is no reason to talk about Hamas; there is only one issue here: the right of the native people to self-determination. Once that’s resolved, we can talk about Hamas if it’s still around.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
That “right of self determination” will be resolved as soon as the right of Dixie to self determination is resolved. Actually, it WAS resolved, much to Woodrow Wilson’s consternation. Resolved by U.S. Grant.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
abb1
More from Malcolm Shaw’s book to confirm what I said before (pp 1037-38)
“The UN Charter neither confirms or denies a right of rebellion. It is neutral. International law does not forbid rebellion, it leaves it within the purview of domestic law. The General Assembly, however, began adopting resolutions in the 1970s reaffirming the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for liberation from colonial domination and alien subjugation, ‘by all means available including armed struggle.’ … In particular, the issue centred on whether the use of force by people entitled to self-determination was legitimate as self-defence against the very existence of colonialism itself or whether as a response to force utilised to suppress the right of self-determination. The former view was taken by most Third World States and the latter by many Western states. ..The view that articles 2(4) and 51 of the [UN] Charter now apply to self-determination conflicts so that the peoples in question have a valid right to use force in self-defence is controversial and difficult to maintain.”
So whether you are talking about Hamas or a Palestinian people, you have decidedly not proved your case.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
abb1, So you are claiming that the people of Gaza are under “colonial domination” and that Hamas is fighting against that oppression? How far deranged from reality can you possibly get?
Refresher: Gaza is the place from which the rockets and mortars were fired into Israel. There were no Jews (colonialist occupiers in your terms) in Gaza at the time.
Even on the WB where there are Jews (defending themselves from terrorists, not occupying a colony) – there can not be “colonial occupation” because there are no accepted boundaries between Israel and the WB. The WB is a “disputed territory”. Until the dispute is settled there is no legal or moral reason to grant the Arabs there preferential rights to the Jews who have settled there. There is certainly no basis in law to justify Arab attacks from there against Jews in Israel as “resistance to colonial oppression”.
If your twisted theory were true, then US support for Israel (colonialists) would justify attacks by Palestinians (and their Muslim allies) against the US by “any means at their disposal”- which seems to include attacks such as 9/11.
Do you approve of that attack against the US that killed 3000 innocent American civilians?
October 26th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Sure, perhaps it won’t be resolved, but then a few rockets and whatever else might coming (blown-up buses and restaurants, etc.) seems like a fair price to pay.
What’s really annoying is this constant whining, constant complaining from you savages. Raping and whining, raping and complaining, raping and asking for sympathy. That’s just disgusting, I must say.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
abb1,
I ask no sympathy from you whatever. You are the one asking sympathy from me, even if you don’t say so.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
How am I asking for your sympathy?
October 26th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
It seems that abb1 apparently condones more egregious violence against Palestinians (i.e., Hamas against anti-Hamas Palestinians) than the IDF has inflicted, including mass rapes and executions. (abb1 does not endorse mass rapes and executions, but he has written that if Hamas hypothetically decided to do so, that’d be their call which he wouldn’t judge (and no one else should judge it either). If anyone thinks this is an uncharitable reading of what’s written, I’d be open to a less horrifying interpretation.)
October 26th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
“What’s really annoying is this constant whining, constant complaining from you savages. Raping and whining, raping and complaining, raping and asking for sympathy. That’s just disgusting, I must say.”
Sometimes I wish Israel would declare “do the time, do the crime” week, and “go Arab” on Hamas so that twits like you would know what the word “savage” actually means.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Oh, poor dear, Julian Elson, he is horrified. Horrified by improper behavior of people on the edge of extermination. They are so ungentlemanly. Why don’t they just realize their ethnic incompatibility with their native land and die quietly.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
“Oh, poor dear, Julian Elson, he is horrified. Horrified by improper behavior of people on the edge of extermination. They are so ungentlemanly. Why don’t they just realize their ethnic incompatibility with their native land and die quietly.”
Funny, but that’s what you’re demanding of the people in Sderot. Oh, that’s right. They’re not human. They’re Zionists.
Like I said, I’d like Israel just for one week to do what you accuse them of, so you’d know the difference.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Well, Omri, it figures that you’d be a racist. Nothing new here.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
People in Sderot are colonizers. They are free to go back to Brooklyn or Minsk or Baghdad or wherever the hell they have come from. Or they are free to rebel against their government and demand that the rights of the native population are restored. But they choose to do neither. For that they’re paying the price. That’s life.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Bullshit. People in Sderot are 2nd generation refugees from several corners of the Arab world. You would ethnically cleanse them. That makes you no better than Milosevic.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
And you are the reason Israel should just once go Arab on Hamas.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
“That “right of self determination” will be resolved as soon as the right of Dixie to self determination is resolved. Actually, it WAS resolved, much to Woodrow Wilson’s consternation. Resolved by U.S. Grant.”
So you think that the conquered Palestinians should have the right to vote then?
On the human rights thing, the one good thing about abb1’s position is that it exposes people like me as the bland centrists we truly are. I think Israel is run by war criminals and so is Hamas. So are some PA members (like Dahlan, the puppet the US tried to use to overthrow Hamas after they won the election). Find ‘em all guilty and throw away the key.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
“So you think that the conquered Palestinians should have the right to vote then? ”
To vote on what? On the right to impose Sharia Law on Jews, for example? (Something Hamas and most Gaza Palestinians support.)
No. Just as I don’t think Dixians have the right to vote to reimpose Jim Crow.
Self-determination is always a cover for something. Sometimes something benign, usually not. Self determination is a concept born of the diseased mind of an unreconstructed Southerner named Woodrow Wilson, and deserves no respect nor consideration on anyone’s part, let alone the Gazans.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
People in Sderot are 2nd generation refugees from several corners of the Arab world.
Bullshit. They are not refugees, there are very few refugees, vast majority of them left voluntarily (or were terrorized by Mossad until they left, like the Iraqi Jews). And if any of them are refugees (which I doubt) they certainly can move back now.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
I’m with Omri. Yank the right of Southerners to vote.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Sure, abb1, they could have stayed and been treated worse than the Palestinians could even imagine. But since they chose not to, that makes them fair game in your racist worldview.
BTW, that old Mossad-blew-things-up-in-Iraq story is a hoax.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Let’s be honest here. Palestinians simply see this as the Arab / Israeli war – as the great majority of Palestinians and Arabs in the world have seen it since 1948. The West (and even some Israelis) continue to pretend that Israel’s War of Independence ended and it’s now about some settlement over boundaries or settlements or cash flow or something. It should be readily apparent to anyone reading some of the comments in this forum who has their eyes open that this is not the case.
All this discussion of laws and agreements and what happened to whom, and when – are just verbal games being played to distract the West into believing what we so want to believe – that Israel’s Arab enemies are reasonable people just looking for a just and reasonable resolution to their aspirations.
Reading history and especially these comments it should be obvious that nothing is further from the truth. It’s always been about one thing: Israel’s defeat and Arab victory, which means one thing, Arab sovereignty over the land currently occupied by the state of Israel. That’s exactly what they’ve been saying all this time. It’s in their charters and it’s in their sermons and it’s what they constantly tell each other and swear to never forget. But we prefer to pretend they don’t really mean it. That if we send them enough money and if we make it really difficult for Israel to defend itself and if we treat them as if they had peaceful intentions – then they’ll wake up one day and realize we all can be friends after all.
That’s the same approach we had to Hitler’s threats which we also discounted as political rhetoric meant only for his followers. And then when the war started we said the same thing about the death camps. Am I the only one who sees a pattern here?
October 26th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
go Arab on Hamas
Could try a more subtle sort of racism, please? This is not Jerusalem Post, you know. Some of us here get nauseous.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Seriously, though, the frothing hate expressed by settler types like Omri is really something to see. It would be terrifying if I were Palestinian, but fortunately I’m American — so for me it’s just funny, like a little squeaky mouse running around underfoot.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
BTW, that old Mossad-blew-things-up-in-Iraq story is a hoax
Right, because Zionists would never do anything like that.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
You’re not even nauseated by Hamas launching rockets at 7:55 in order to maximize the risk to children in Sderot, abb1.
You’re not nauseated by Hamas wanting to ethnically cleanse Israel.
Hell, you support the ethnic cleansing of Israel.
So don’t claim you can be nauseated. You support any form of brutality for a cause you support. And you know full well Israel has not used it. Yet.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
BTW, that old Mossad-blew-things-up-in-Iraq story is a hoax.
Oh, the never-ending squeaking.
One thing that’s interesting about rabid right-wing racists is that their brains work the same the world over. There’s no question that if Omri had been born elsewhere, he would earnestly believe that other established historical events are “hoaxes.”
October 26th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Sympathy? I don’t need no stinkin’ sympathy. I need for people who purposely attack civilians and then try to justify it as some kind of honorable act of war – to get arrested and spend the rest of their life in prison – or not survive the attempt to arrest them.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
to Omri:
Looks to me like a conversation between sides that can’t hear one another, sorta like the one between the Israeli crazies and the Palestinian crazies.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
No, I’m OK with the rockets, as I said. Also with people from Brooklyn, Minsk, and Baghdad going back home, as I said, if they prefer to go home rather than restore the rights of the native population. Nothing’s wrong with that, sounds fine to me.
No one in the right mind would call it “ethnic cleansing”, of course; just a collapse of a little racist colonial-settler regime.
Eventually that’s how it’s going to play out anyway. It always does.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
“One thing that’s interesting about rabid right-wing racists is that their brains work the same the world over. There’s no question that if Omri had been born elsewhere, he would earnestly believe that other established historical events are “hoaxes.”
I’ll tell you what’s not a hoax: the Farhud massacre, in which mobs murdered 180 Baghdadi Jews and burned the Jewish quarter.
What’s also not a hoax is decades of Iraqi government repression of the Jews that brought Baghdad down from being 1/3 Jewish to having 1-3 Jews left.
What’s also not a hoax is steady attrition of desparate Jews risking their lives to sneak across to Iran and then to Israel.
What is a hoax, however, is the story of how the Mossad blew up a Baghdad synagogue in 1951. (A shame the Zionists didn’t blow up the synagogue of Warsaw in, say, 1931, though . Imagine how many lives that would have saved.)
October 26th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
“Also with people from Brooklyn, Minsk, and Baghdad going back home”
Those people were born in Israel. Forcing them to leave on grounds of ethnicity is the very definition of ethnic cleansing. Even when it’s aimed at ethnic groups you want to cleanse, abb1, it’s still ethnic cleansing.
And thank you for admitting that you’re fine with rockets. At least you’re not that grade of chickenshit that would mince words about it.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
“Sympathy? I don’t need no stinkin’ sympathy. I need for people who purposely attack civilians and then try to justify it as some kind of honorable act of war – to get arrested and spend the rest of their life in prison – or not survive the attempt to arrest them.”
Hey, that’s just how I feel. Whether it’s Israeli or Palestinian leaders, all these damn mass murderers should be thrown in jail and left to rot.
“To vote on what?”
That’s the spirit Omri. You support apartheid and you don’t pretend otherwise.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
There is no good reason to think that “by any means at their disposal” means, in context, any means including genocide, mass murder of civilians, torture, or other violations of universal human rights or the laws of war.
I would agree that Palestinians have the right to engage in armed resistance. General Assembly Resolution 2649 obviously endorses that proposition. But it is absurd to think that the General Assembly somehow meant to implicitly state that all of the most fundamental legal and moral obligations of combatants just don’t apply to Palestinian combatants.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Forcing them to leave on grounds of ethnicity is the very definition of ethnic cleansing
Nobody is forcing them to do anything. If they don’t like the rockets, they must restore the rights of the native people of the region, and with that they can stay of course. But I suspect most of them will choose to leave. This is how it usually plays out.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Omri, which settlement are you or your family involved with? Many seem to produce their own particular form of mental processes, in my experience.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Well, the Gazans support the imposition of Sharia law on Jews.
Now THAT is apartheid for real, not the usual hyperbole you toss on Israelis. And yes, that would make them leave. Now, using random violence on people with the intent of getting them to leave, is the very definition of forcing them to leave. You’re not even good with wordplay.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
yui: me? Tel Aviv. Which by abb1’s reckoning is a settlement just as much as Sderot.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Well, the Gazans support the imposition of Sharia law on Jews.
Well, Zionists didn’t like the secular liberation movements and they created Hamas. So, go file a complaint at your local Zionist youth center.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
“Well, Zionists didn’t like the secular liberation movements and they created Hamas.”
Hamas is composed of human beings gifted with free will. We did not create them.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Right, all those human being were just born that way. 40 years of occupation, plunder, ethnic cleansing, assassinations and general brutality have absolutely nothing to with it.
That’s the ticket!
October 26th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
me? Tel Aviv.
Wow, that’s terrifying to hear. If your brand of rabid right-wing racism is widely acceptable now in Tel Aviv, this is certainly going to end in a bloodbath for everyone.
Here’s an interesting fact, Omri: all the mass slaughters condemned by history were carried out by people claiming their much-weaker victims were about to destroy them. It was self-defense, you see.
So you’re certainly taking the right path to fomenting your own mass slaughter. Which of course when you write your version of crazy right-wing racist history will turn out to be a “hoax.”
October 26th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
“. If your brand of rabid right-wing racism is widely acceptable now in Tel Aviv, this is certainly going to end in a bloodbath for everyone.”
You can reduce me to a straw man all you like. I am neither right wing, nor a racist. I would like to see a secular liberal Middle East. But I will not sacrifice my tribe’s safety and well being for it. We are faced against people who openly advocate subjecting us to ethnic cleansing, and I support whatever level of resistance it will take to establish to our enemies that this cleansing will not be feasible.
Now look at what I said here: I said “go Arab on Hamas.” Going Arab means adopting the levels of brutality that Nasser used in Yemen, Assad used on Hama, Saddam used on Iran, or Morroco uses in the Western Sahara. It is the accepted way of war in Arabic speaking nations. It is not the accepted way of war in the IDF. And it is not racist to point this out.
And if you’re shocked at the notion of the IDF resorting to it, then you know full well that the aspersions cast at the IDF are false.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
While this thread has gone way past “discussion” it sure does show the reality of what’s in some minds. The honesty is refreshing.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Yes, he actually does sound like one of the better ones. Imagine the average…
October 26th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
We don’t need to imagine you, abb1.
We have you right here openly supporting ethnic cleansing.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
“It is not the accepted way of war in the IDF.”
Oh, don’t sell yourself short. RIght around the time (give or take a year) Assad leveled Hama Israel was bombing the hell out of Beirut. Thousands died.
You guys just lie about it better.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Israel took years to inflict the casualties that Assad took a week to inflict in Hama.
’struth. We’re pikers.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
I am neither right wing, nor a racist.
Huh. Every single thing you’re saying is exactly what all the rabid right-wing racists of history have said. And yet you’re not a rabid right wing racist.
What an odd coincidence.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Nah, the 1982 Lebanon War was just June through August, with the Sabra and Shatila massacres in September (which were contracted out). It was really quite a respectable performance in the civilian-killing department. And it’s not like the only war that Israel has targeted civilians either.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
I’m openly supporting you going back home where you belong, and maybe, with any luck, getting involved into something a bit more decent, like stealing candy from little children or something.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Oh, I believe Omri isn’t rightwing. Lots of liberals can be and are tribalist in morality. Happens a lot. It shouldn’t, you’d think, but it does. Look at Dershowitz.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
You can keep candycoating, abb1, but what you’re supporting is ethnic cleansing. Specifically, you’re supporting the ethnic cleansing out of Israel starting with people who were cleansed INTO Israel to begin with.
And you support sending rockets at 7:55 AM to maximize the risk to school children.
All I support is enough militancy to establish that this ethnic cleansing effort will fail, and not a smidgeon more.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Israel took years to inflict the casualties that Assad took a week to inflict in Hama.
BTW, that old lots-of-people-were-massacred-in-Hama story is a hoax.
Also, Assad had no choice. The people he was fighting against were ARABS.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
“Nah, the 1982 Lebanon War was just June through August, with the Sabra and Shatila massacres in September (which were contracted out).”
Yup. Arabs going Arab on other Arabs. Just the thought of the IDF doing it for a week is enough to shock people here.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
“Also, Assad had no choice. The people he was fighting against were ARABS.”
You might be right. I’ve never heard any anti-Israeli activist ever even implying that Assad had another choice. I challenge you to find even one example.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
I’ve never heard any anti-Israeli activist ever even implying that Assad had another choice.
Huh. Given that the people he was massacring were largely members of the Muslim Brotherhood, I would have thought they’d say he had another choice. But I bow to your superior knowledge of the middle east.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
They were actually “cleansed INTO Israel”, huh. So, you agree that the bombing campaign was organized by Zionists, then?
October 26th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
the 1982 Lebanon War was just June through August
Right. Similarly, the whole Hama massacre took place over more than a month.
Interesting fact: some of the most important support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria — as it was killing hundreds of Syrian civilians pre-massacre — came from Israel and Jordan.
October 26th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
What a bunch of yahoos we’ve got here. Zioland is a creation of the United Nations, the same United Nations whose Fourth Geneva Protocols that apartheid state consistently flounts. Its first act was to ethnically cleanse 700 000 Palestinians from their homes. And it continues.
There would be no such place if the US taxpayer were not willing to fork over billions a year to keep it going. And what has it got for its money? Can you people seriously defend a state for “Jews only”, where a major bunch of the population claims that “god gave it to them”? This is no different from that the whacko in Waco some years back. Such a state is an aberration, and it will go the way of the Crusader states that once existed in Palestine. Into the dumptster of history.
October 26th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
No, abb1, the campaign of anti-Jewish violence all over the world was not organized by Zionists. The rescue of Jews from that campaign, however, was.
BTW, Sderot started out as a refugee camp for Jews escaping Morocco, not Iraq. So your little hoax about a bombing in Baghdad is completely beside teh point.
October 26th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
“Zioland is a creation of the United Nations”, uh, no. Zioland is a creation of the IDF, with some help from Czech arms smugglers. That vote in a gym in Flushing Meadows, by that squalid club now found in Turtle Bay, it counted for nothing.
October 26th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
That vote in a gym in Flushing Meadows, by that squalid club now found in Turtle Bay, it counted for nothing.
“Fuck them! The international community, and those who listen them!”
Nice! It seems as though Omri, in his determination to demonstrate his violent, rabid racism, is determined to hit every single classic trope of violent, rabid racists.
Amusingly, the famous tape of Chemical Ali in which he said this was given to Human Rights Watch, bringing this post full circle.
October 26th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
[...] reason” that Muslims simply can’t manage to understand or accept? Along those lines, here’s Matt Yglesias contrasting the reaction of Hamas with the reaction of Israel to the Goldstone [...]
October 27th, 2009 at 2:50 am
[...] Muslims simply can’t manage to understand or accept? Along those lines, here’s Matt Yglesias contrasting the reaction of Hamas with the reaction of Israel to the Goldstone report. Possibly [...]
October 27th, 2009 at 3:15 am
BTW, Sderot started out as a refugee camp for Jews escaping Morocco
There was no “escaping Morocco”. Emigration from Morocco was strictly voluntary, and Zionist-induced – to bring some cannon-fodder and free labor to their ethnic paradise.
People who came from Morocco have never been refugees, nor do they consider themselves refugees. They are garden variety second-class settlers-colonizers.
October 27th, 2009 at 4:40 am
Awesome! I have read a lot on this topic, but you definitely give it a good vibe. This is a great post. Will be back to read more! Please come visit my site City Guide Denver when you got time.
October 27th, 2009 at 7:21 am
…oh, and I’m being told that at least half of these Sderot people are Russians, none of whom, of course, ever even sat to shit next to a refugee in their entire lives. These are pure settler-colonizers.
October 27th, 2009 at 8:31 am
There was no “escaping Morocco”. Emigration from Morocco was strictly voluntary, and Zionist-induced – to bring some cannon-fodder and free labor to their ethnic paradise.
Just like emigration from Russia in the 1890’s was purely voluntary. Yes, you could stay, and be treated like shit, and probably lose a daughter to abduction and forcible marriage. But you could stay.
That you would even suggest it shows you as the antisemite you are.
October 27th, 2009 at 8:32 am
You’re right that they aren’t refugees now, though. We only made them stay in camps for two decades, and we consider even that a disgrace.
because we’re Jews, not Arabs.
October 27th, 2009 at 9:08 am
The word “refugee” has a meaning, and to be considered a refugee certain conditions have to be met. These conditions didn’t exist in Morocco, and that’s all there is to it.
You see, words have meanings, and, fortunately, hardly anyone is buying your bullshit sophistry and your constant whining anymore, my friend.
October 27th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Yes, a refugee is someone who skedaddles to avoid violence. And that is what those Jews did. There was violence. There were riots. Murders. Bombings. Rapes. So they fled.
October 27th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Funny how you accuse me of twisting language, when you openly advocate ethnic cleansing and yet deny it in the same breath.
October 27th, 2009 at 10:36 am
I for one support 0mri’s right of return.
October 27th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
…with a good-bye kick in the ass from a Sharia-following Hamaster.
October 27th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
CGD (comment # 83):
Yeah, there’s always a mellow vibe whenever folks kick back and discuss the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I’ll bet the same holds true for you bots when you
cross-spaminate one another’s blogs. Come back again, “when you got time.”
October 27th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Too bad for you, abb1, the IDF will continue to make that infeasible.
Keep cheering the murder of children in Sderot, abb1. Show us all what you are.