UC Berkeley's Sproul HallToday I received an email from UC Berkeley's Students for Justice in Palestine through my department list calling on students to join a "die in" on Sproul Plaza in protest of "israeli government atrocity" [sic]. The email went on to claim that
the daunting words of israeli deputiy defense minister matan vilnai areThis is a blatant and unacceptable lie. First, the organizers seem to have missed the fact that IDF operations in Gaza effectively ended on Sunday. Second, to say that "hundreds" of innocent civilians are being "gunned down" is a willful distortion of the facts. The SJP has become a mouthpiece for the likes of Khaled Meshal, it appears. It reminds me of the hysterical emails about "massacres" and "holocaust" that were circulated following the IDF incursion into Hebron as part of Operation Defensive Shield in spring 2002. Most of the dead then were armed fighters not civilians.
coming true, as a holocaust is bloodying the mediterranean sea under OUR
WATCH. Hundreds of innocent civilians are being gunned down and bombed in
their homes and cities, and we can not sit back and let this happen.
The "daunting" words attributed to Vilnai are also a distortion. On Friday, the Guardian reported that
An Israeli minister today warned of increasingly bitter conflict in the Gaza Strip, saying the Palestinians could bring on themselves what he called a "holocaust".But Vilnai actually said the following:
ככל שירי הקסאם גובר ומאריך טווחים, הפלסטינים מביאים על עצמם שואה יותר גדולהWhen people mean "the Holocaust," in Israel, the word "shoah" is preceded by a definite article - "ha-shoah." Of course, even "shoah" by itself is a strong word - but it means destruction or disaster, which is what Vilnai intended. This is quite clear from the context of the word, as it is followed by the modifier "even greater." In any case, to call what happened in Gaza this past weekend, as the SJP did, a "holocaust" in the sense of a genocide claiming the lives of millions of people is disgusting.
As long as the qassam firing increases and lengthens in distance, the Palestinians bring even greater destruction [shoah] upon themselves.
What's so galling is that this email claims that Israel's goal is to commit a genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. There is no context for the IDF operation; it is only part of an eternal campaign of oppression. Never mind the hundreds of rockets that have rained on Israeli cities - with the deliberate intent to kill Israeli civilians.
How long will people keep up the moral obfuscation by which military operations pursuing armed fighters, who hide out in civilian areas, are equated with deliberate efforts to murder families sitting in their homes?
44 comments:
Hazbani again.
As to the question in the end the answear is the lies will go on FOR EVER. People have been telling lies about Jews for the last 2000 why should they stop now?
Hazbani again.
You will find at least one of the writers to this blog in the organization. These people talk and write according to the time and place, Facts? we are all post modern arnt we?
You offer excellent points on the lack of nuance in the email, and I appreciate your close reading and correct translation on Valnai's comments. I find it puzzling that the original email was considered appropriate for an academic forum/listserve when it overlooks the possibility of a more complex conflict.
the students are complete wankers, quite obviously. I have no doubt that your translation of what Vilnai said is correct, However, don't you think senior politicians have to think about what sort of interpretations are liable to put be put on certain words, before they use them, as well as who is likely to benefit from those interpretations?
Yes, everybody should calm down. Stop being so hysterical--there has been no catastrophe, only that 116 Palestinians have been murdered by the IDF. One pro-Israel organization on campus, Tikvah (if this is what Israelis see as hope...), has proudly declared that Israel has "eliminated 110 terrorists," 1/3rd of those terrorists being children. Israel does not want to kill civilians, but it is officially investigating how it can legalize actions which target "populated areas." The myth that knowingly and willfully attacking an area populated by civilians to hit a target is not an intentional attack on civilians has gone long enough--that is moral obfuscation.
In any case, the word genocide did not appear in that e-mail. If you are going to blame anybody for the translation error (and we are taking it as an error because Matan Vilnai has clarified he meant merely "disaster," which is more palatable), blame Reuters, do not blame SJP.
Nevertheless, regardless of whether you think the murder of 116 Palestinians (1/3rd children according to Maan) is a 'holocaust,' 'genocide,' 'massacre,' 'collateral damage,' or 'business as usual,' regardless of whether you are more outraged by deaths in Sderot or Gaza, there is only one way to stop this type of violence. Perhaps we cannot come together on characterizing this violence, but at the very least there is an opportunity to come together on resolving the crisis by addressing longstanding Palestinian grievances.
I agree - this email was inappropriate for a departmental listserv, so the hysterics it contained were more laughable than honestly serious. I wish that instead of a publicity stunt there would be more honest dialogue and information about the situation.
I'm reminded of the fact that the radical protests against the Vietnam War ended up hampering the efforts of liberal-minded legislators attempting to end American participation, who ended up getting lumped together with the protesters.
Is this really how our generation tackles serious issues?
"In any case, the word genocide did not appear in that e-mail."
No, but the word holocaust did. However, you are correct that the students didn't intentionally misrepresent the quote.
Yes, you're right Eamonn.
Yaman - You're right, of course we should come together to stop violence. But there is a lot of doubt these days that addressing longstanding grievances will really stop the violence. I guess, more importantly, not everyone's interests align to allow for the grievances of either side to be fully assuaged.
It is not all that easy to ascertain the "motives" for the qassam fire, especially since we are talking about a few different groups who are involved in it. We know that without Hamas's approval, there would be few rockets hitting Sderot, not to mention Ashqelon. So what is the thinking behind this?
For Hamas, the qassam launchings seem part of an aim to build up "deterrence" against Israel that would make the IDF hesitate before entering the Gaza strip or killing Hamas figures. Another goal seems to be to force Israel to lift the blockade on Gaza and to recognize the Hamas government. It's a pretty absurd strategy, I have to say, though the Europeans and others seem to believe that it would make sense for Israel to recognize a government that sets out everyday to deliberately kill Israeli civilians. Lastly, the qassam firings play a more complicated role in the conflict between Fatah and Hamas.
Will these motivations disappear as soon as the larger Palestinian grievances are addressed?
Given that I'm not on the Hamas administration listserv, if such a thing exists, I can't tell you the exact motives of anybody who is firing them. From an outside perspective, I think there are a number of different theories (just as there are for Israeli violence). The easy one is to say that it's irrational and eternal, as you've implied I think, but I'm suspicious of these claims whether they are made about Palestinians or about Israeli state violence (for example, that Israel maniacally craves ethnic cleansing or genocide for the act in and of itself).
Continuing off of what Hazbani said in a previous comment about "normalcy" (only if we can consider this in an ethical/moral vacuum), I think this type of violence which is partially indiscriminate killing military personnel as well as civilians is quite "normal" for guerrilla movements which are fighting an oppressive power. It happened in Algeria, it's happening in Kurdistan, it happened it Kosovo, it happened in Germany, it's happening in Iraq, it happened in South Africa, it's happening in Kashmir and Chechnya, it happened it Latin & South America, and it happened in Spain. That is not to say that any of these movements are justified or legitimate, necessarily. But it is only to say that considering the balance of power, this type of violence is quite typical. Nobody expects Israel or the Palestinian resistance to be morally perfect examples.
However, there is one thing to note. It is impossible to hold a guerilla force accountable, except by collective punishment. It is on the other hand possible to hold a state accountable through various international institutions as well as through bilateral relations.
Nevertheless, in all of these cases where the grievances were legitimate, and the cause was just, once the issue was resolved, the violence stopped.
The way to come together on addressing Palestinian grievances is to list them. If key issues are not resolved (and likely they will not be without significant international pressure), then I am not surprised that violence by the IDF as well as the Palestinian resistance would continue.
Regardless, however, I don't ever claim that 'violence' is the key problem here. Israel's excesses only go to show the degree to which it is willing to violate its own stated morality in order to repress the Palestinian people.
That should have read: "the way to solving Palestinian grievances begins with listening to them" not "listing them."
Hazbani Commenting
Some body has written:
"The myth that knowingly and willfully attacking an area populated by civilians to hit a target is not an intentional attack on civilians has gone long enough--that is moral obfuscation".
But!!! if you bomb Israeli civilian sites with more than 4000 missiles this is OK because some people think that bombing Jews is OK and killing them is even better. If this is not a racist position than what is it?
Yaman,
I don't think I was saying that the violence (of the qassam launchings) was "eternal," and in my penultimate paragraph, I offered a few explanations for its "rationality."
The comparative perspective you open up is interesting. It might be useful to include the many historical examples of extremely oppressive force that were not opposed by the kind of violence that you describe. All too often, it seems to me, the assumption reigns that the severity of particular atrocities committed by guerrilla fighters, for example, is evidence of a corresponding degree of state oppression. I remember hearing an argument at a demonstration several years ago, where an activist argued that the suicide bombings carried out by Palestinians were evidence
of the genocidal nature of Israeli violence.
I am far less sanguine than you about the ability of universal "justice" itself to assuage grievances and thereby result in the cessation of violence. Many of the guerrilla-state conflicts which you mention (i.e., the smaller number of them which are no longer active) ended with the "cleansing" of one of the parties to the conflict.
I would argue that armed resistance movements tend to have an interest in perpetuating violence, and that, especially when there is no equivalent investment in the infrastructure of civil society, their means and ends become hopelessly entangled. I realize that you would ask me to make the same argument about the Israeli state and military. However, in the case of Sderot, it is quite clear that the aim of Israel is simply to stop the firing of rockets at the town. Without the qassam attacks, there would be no IDF activity in Gaza.
Curious also about which particular insurrectionary movement in Germany you were referring to.
BTW, I highly recommend the piece by Yaman to which he linked above. You may not agree with all the conclusions, but the analysis is extremely sophisticated and a pleasure to read.
"Continuing off of what Hazbani said in a previous comment about "normalcy" (only if we can consider this in an ethical/moral vacuum), I think this type of violence which is partially indiscriminate killing military personnel as well as civilians is quite "normal" for guerrilla movements which are fighting an oppressive power. It happened in Algeria, it's happening in Kurdistan, it happened it Kosovo, it happened in Germany, it's happening in Iraq, it happened in South Africa, it's happening in Kashmir and Chechnya, it happened it Latin & South America, and it happened in Spain."
what was it that happened in Germany? You can't be talking about the RAF in the 70s can you?
"it happened in South Africa,"
no, by and large it didn't. With certain very limited exceptions Umkhonto we Sizwe confined its attacks to military and infrastructire targets
"it happened it Latin & South America,"
Latin America is a big place. could you give some examples of what you mean?
"and it happened in Spain."
unless it gets very lucky, like it did in France a couple of months ago when a commando chanced on two unarmed Spanish cops which it promptly murdered, ETA has for many years specialised in bumping off people who disagree with it, one at a time.
The T4 bomb was an exception in this regard
Anon,
"I'm reminded of the fact that the radical protests against the Vietnam War ended up hampering the efforts of liberal-minded legislators attempting to end American participation, who ended up getting lumped together with the protesters." I didn't realize this was established historical "fact." I guess we should all just sit tight and wait for the "liberal-minded legislators" to do all the good things in the world, instead of getting in their way all the time by raising issues.
Yaman,
"The way to solving Palestinian grievances begins with listening to them." So what are the plausible motives, reflecting underlying issues, for the qassam launches?
eamonn,
You're carping, as far as I can tell. You can't seriously think that Yaman's basic point that lots of guerrilla groups target civilians is wrong. Or are you suggesting that European guerrillas are somehow more civilized than those elsewhere? Let me offer a counterexample: IRA London bombings.
In some cases what he said is right, in others it's wrong and the rest of the time it's either windy genernalisations, "in Latin America" etc or it's impossible to know what he's on about
PS. As far as I know, South Africa isn't part of Europe
Eamonn, when I mentioned Spain I was not thinking of ETA, I was thinking of the resistance to Franco. As for South Africa, you should look into the discourse that the South African government used to discredit the legitimate grievances of those fighting apartheid--I think the parallels to Israeli state discourse are very strong. In any case, Ariel is right, your response is tangential to my point, which is that Israeli repression and Palestinian resistance are firmly within the realm of "normalcy" as far as violence between a powerful state and non-state actors are concerned.
Ariel, I mentioned in a previous comment I don't know the motives of the people firing. I know that the Hamas rationalization for killing civilians--the religious one--is that they are merely employing the same tactics that Israel employs on their communities. I don't agree with that argument, but that is the one I've heard from people who justify suicide bombing of cafes and restaurants. Outside observers say a number of things, but it's too much of a TV-like "strategy" talking point for me to really care about it; I have heard people say that Hamas strategically has no "cards" to play (since politics is a poker game, according to this one) with Israel re negotiations except the threat of violence; I have heard others say that the only way for Hamas to capture the attention of people regarding the plight of Gaza is through this kind of rocket-firing. And of course there is the classic "Hamas is genocidal and will never stop killing Jews because that's just the way they are" line of inquiry which abandons any chance that there are reasons for violence.
By the way, Ariel, I should note that there is a similarity between Hamas rationalizations for suicide bombs and Israeli justification for collective punishment. One, I have heard Hamas spokespeople claim that they never "want" or "like" to kill civilians, but if they are "there," what can they do? Second, I have heard people claim that because every Israeli is drafted into the military, there are no Israeli civilians. Third, is the one I mentioned earlier, that because Israel kills Palestinian civilians indiscriminately, it is okay for Palestinians to do the same.
Of course I disagree/don't believe in any of these three. But that is what I have heard out there.
Okay, guys, the immediate cause for the escalation in qassam firing that took place last week and resulted in operation "Warm Winter" is not all that mysterious. The IDF killed a whole bunch of relatively senior Hamas fighters with an air strike. Hamas retaliated, and they obviously didn't care a whole lot about the consequences their retaliation would have for civilians in Gaza.
BTW, I've now seen two articles by Amos Harel in which he gives a picture of the fighting. Most of the civilian casualties occurred took place when IDF troops were evacuating wounded soldiers under fire. You can imagine that in such cases, the order to respond with artillery, tank, or air fire will be more readily given by a commander than in a purely offensive situation. In this second article, Harel also quotes senior officers who claim that some civilian casualties were caused by Hamas gunfire. That doesn't sound so implausible to me.
Yaman,
These are not causes, they are either (1) talking head tropes or (2) political rationalizations. I'm interested in what you see as the underlying reasons for the violence, i.e., the issues that, if resolved, can put an end to this madness.
The Lies of Yaman Salahi:
http://www.yamansalahi.com/2008/03/04/absurdities/tikvah-students-for-israels-false-hope/#comments
I read it.
How is Yaman lying?
ariel, I think they are the classic Palestinian grievances: occupation, siege, refugees, ... these are aggravated by the fact that Israel kidnapped and arrested nearly 1/2 of the elected Palestinian parliament in 2006, refuses to talk with Hamas (and thus the representatives of half of Palestinian society), and finally, the direct impact of soldier-civilian interactions should not be underestimated.
it's such a worn out argument about hamas representing the majority of the palestinian people ... so what if hamas represents the palestinian majority ?? did we sign some paper where we obliged ourselves to talk to people who openly call for our elimination ??? what is this nonsense ??
israel withdrew from gaza providing the palestinians with a chance to take at least gaza out of the conflict ... instead the palestinians have brought to power a movement that features this in its manifesto:
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 Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
Source
i can teach a parrot to chant slogans for peace and democracy ... so what ??? the palestinians had elections and democratically elected somebody ... a big deal indeed ... in the next elections these monkeys may vote for hizb ut-tahrir or something worse ... so we will have to talk to those too ????
we should not talk to hamas at all .. the only thing they can offer us is a 10 year ceasefire because, according to their understanding of the sharia, they cannot give up on one inch of palestine all of which is waqf ... they can only suspend a conflict for a few years, just to take time off, rearm themselves to the teeth and restart the war ... they explained themselves very well on quite a few occasions ...
yaman may think that hamas and hezbollah are democratic and pluralistic or whatever as he claimed in one of his comments on another thread .. but as the only democracy in this region we know better
Who is this fool calling the Yaman link lies? Probably the same guy I saw yesterday claiming that the tiger has no stripes.
On the other hand, I have to agree with Nobody's main point (not his use of the term "monkeys") that Israel is under no obligation to discuss anything at the official level with Hamas, democratically elected or not, basically for the kinds of reasons Nobody gives.
Well, I never meant to say that Israel has an obligation to talk to Hamas. It is the only way to deal with Palestinian society holistically though. Whether Hamas is a majority or a 30% minority, it is still an important and powerful part of Palestinian society. If you say that it is Israel's obligation to extinguish Hamas, to bring to power other Palestinians by direct intervention and coup attempts, then you acknowledge that Israel does not seek sovereignty or independence for the Palestinians, but subservience.
Yaman gets called on basic errors and vagueness in his argument and can't give a response that points to the facts... apparently it's all tangential and he is right in some metaphysical way that goes deeper than his mere words.
great
eamonn,
I think you continue to fasten on minor matters. Metaphysics has nothing to do with it. So far your points on this thread have been (1) that the SJP students are "obviously wankers"; (2) that Israeli politicians should watch how their words might be translated; (3) that Yaman's choice of int'l guerrila organizations was somewhat imprecise. None of these strike me as particularly conducive of further discussion.
On the other hand, Yaman has been more interesting, even if I don't agree with everything he says. Take for example his first statment: "Yes, everybody should calm down. Stop being so hysterical--there has been no catastrophe, only that 116 Palestinians have been murdered by the IDF." I could take issue with the word "murdered" here, which I think is a mischaracterization and could be misleading in another context. But I think the intended meaning is quite evident: that the deaths of over a hundred of his countrymen is, to put it mildly, quite distressing. For this same reason I didn't have the same reaction Amos did to the "die in" email, which I also received. There too the words chosen may not have been strictly reasonable, but the situation was fundamentally not reasonable, and I appreciated the urgency and earnestness of the appeal. Really, the only wankers in the whole episode were the Tikvah students, some of whom I've had the opportunity to run into. Those kids appear to me to have completely sealed themselves off from any capacity to feel sympathy for anything not 100% pro-Israel.
Yaman,
“If you say that it is Israel's obligation to extinguish Hamas, to bring to power other Palestinians by direct intervention and coup attempts, then you acknowledge that Israel does not seek sovereignty or independence for the Palestinians, but subservience.”
(1) I never said anything of the sort. I merely concurred in Nobody's opinion that there is no reason to expect the Israeli government to talk with Hamas formally. Even if it wanted to, you can't expect that under the current conditions the Israeli public would support such a move.
(2) To be honest, this statement looks to me like you were looking to score some crowd points (not a charge that I can say I’m always innocent of either). I feel no need to acknowledge whether Israel seeks sovereignty or independence for the Palestinians. The matter hasn’t been settled yet within Israel, and there is no clear policy either way. In any case, I have to agree with Amos that the main issue at this moment is the Qassams, not terms like “sovereignty” or “subservience,” which appear more and more like abstractions. I can’t speak for Israel, but Israelis like me seek quiet, peace of mind, and a reasonably just solution for everyone, probably in about that order.
(3) I would expect the Israeli government to take an interest and even try to influence (although not necessarily by direct intervention) who leads the Palestinians. By the same token I would entirely expect you and other Palestinians to take an interest and try to influence who leads Israel. To return to point 1, asking the Israeli government to sit down with Hamas is asking for Bibi to win the next elections.
Ariel, well, if I was looking for crowd points on this forum I don't think that's the line of argument I would have taken :) As for my comment, that was more directed towards Nobody (who made the suggestion in the first place) than you. I don't think there is any obligation in the sense being used to have talks with Hamas, but I don't think this view is consistent with believing that there is an obligation to seek a reasonably just resolution. I threw in those terms--which I agree are abstractions--because the latter kind of obligation leads to that scenario; rather than engaging with the Palestinians as they are, it seeks not even to re-form them first. Usually this kind of thing happens through negotiations, not before them. That is one of the reasons people like Mahmoud Abbas are so despised at this point. And another reason why Israel is more and more despised, besides the military attacks in Gaza and the West Bank which all Israelis know about, are the secretive operations that few Israelis know about, which include work with America to arm and support thugs like Muhammad Dahlan because he is willing to exercise the muscle on the Palestinians that will serve Israel's "security" interests. There was a very interesting talk by Samera Esmeir last fall regarding the way the PA has become an extension of Israel's security structure rather than a government for the Palestinians. It should be posted at www.btiaw.org.
By the way, small point, I am not Palestinian (you mentioned something about my 'countrymen' earlier).
I should not do so much revision of comments; change sentence "it seeks not even to" to "it seeks to"; my bad.
If you say that it is Israel's obligation to extinguish Hamas, to bring to power other Palestinians by direct intervention and coup attempts, then you acknowledge that Israel does not seek sovereignty or independence for the Palestinians, but subservience.
another void of essence argument by yaman made just for the sake of saying something ... the first thing that israel seeks is its survival, in the same way as the first thing, or maybe the second thing hamas seeks is israel's destruction ...
if after 15 years of trying to create palestinian state we are now having to deal with the palestinian government that's ideologically committed to our physical elimination, then we should seek its destruction, subversion or whatever, but certainly not more sovereignty or independence for palestinians ... we are not going to present ourselves to the arabs on a silver plate ... we've got enough refugees fleeing here from darfur ... we know what arab independences and sovereignties can lead to ...
Yaman,
I meant the imagined crowd that sustains one's righteousness, a kind of mental congregation murmuring "amens" at all the right rhetorical moments. I did assume you were Palestinian. Not to be gauche, but what is your connection to all this, then?
subversion was meant to be subservience
ariel, well, I definitely think everyone who writes on the Internet should keep those mental cheering squads in check.
Ariel,
I will let Yaman speak for his biography, but he has been featured in at least two Kishkushim posts from the past year, so google around.
I am apparently more concerned about the kind of language used in the email sent out by SJP than you are. I find the ready embrace of the notion that "the Jews [i.e., Israelis] are the new Nazis" by many circles, for example, "leftists" in Western European countries, very disturbing. It reeks of opportunism - psychological, political, and even economic. It also suggests that despite the preponderance of Holocaust "memory" in our public sphere, people know very little about the important details.
Having said that, I wonder if there is a "responsible" way to publicize atrocities (real or imagined) against one's people. I am actually spending quite a bit of time here at the archive reading Yiddish press coverage of anti-Jewish violence during World War One and trying to think about the reporting itself.
On a vaguely related note, it strikes me that the phenomenon that we see today, of people from across the globe with no "real" connection to the conflict being willing to join in condemnations of Israel and violence against the Palestinians in particular is unprecedented in scale (though not in quality). Certainly, the large majority of those alerting the world to "Jewish suffering" during WWI were Jews. On the other hand, Peggy Anderson of Berkeley's own Department of History has a very interesting piece about European responses to massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman empire, beginning in the 1890s (“'Down in Turkey, far away': Human Rights, the Armenian Massacres, and Orientalism in Wilhelmine Germany", Journal of Modern History 79). She describes these responses as
"one of the West’s earliest and most universal movements to address distant suffering, a movement occasioned by the massacre, beginning in 1894 and continuing for more than two years, of some 200,000 or more Armenians in the Ottoman Empire of Abdul Hamid II."
Yaman - Besides frequent references on Angry Arab to "Dahlan thugs," I have not seen any documentation of these secretive operations. I'd be curious in a more substantive source for these sorts of claims, even if I do not find them a priori implausible.
Israel deliberately kills civilians, and has been doing so for decades. They continue to do so today in Gaza. Your defense of this modern day nazi state renders you an immoral person with no crediblity.
Your defense of Israel is no different than someone defending the German Nazis. Of course, that is if you consider the lives of the goyim to be worth as much as Jewish lives. If you subscribe to the "god's chosen" approach then you can easily comdemn the Nazis and turn around to defend the Zionists. Its obscene, inhumane, and immoral. The shame is yours, and the collapse of the Zionist project is inevitable.
The babies you are killing in Gaza today will only speed up the disintegration process of the Nazi state of Israel.
Go to hell Zionist!
Yaman - Besides frequent references on Angry Arab to "Dahlan thugs," I have not seen any documentation of these secretive operations. I'd be curious in a more substantive source for these sorts of claims, even if I do not find them a priori implausible.
there is none of course .. israeli government is openly saying that it's rooting for abbas ... israeli papers immediately inform the public if israel authorizes another delivery of weapons to PA from jordan or elsewhere ... but then how can such a discussion be complete without the regular arab conspiracism ??? !!! if yaman had not brought this point up i would have called them an arab ashkenazi :D :D
The babies you are killing in Gaza today will only speed up the disintegration process of the Nazi state of Israel.
Go to hell Zionist!
go to hell means go to egypt or sudan or any other of your lovely countries ??? no man ... sorry ... you stay where you are and we stay here
:D :D
Amos, there have been a number of incriminating reports and exposures (you can search AngryArab archives) regarding Dahlan cooperation with Israeli security forces.
Once again, I do not think the e-mail is guilty of the sensationalism that you have mentioned regarding "the new Nazis" etc.
I would be interested in reading about what you have found in your archival research of Yiddish reports of anti-Jewish violence in Europe.
ariel, with all due respect and without wishing to lower the tone of this admirable blog; I don't give a tupenny fuck about your opinion of my contributions to this thread
Ariel, I think Eamon did make a contribution in that he pointed out that Yaman's "contributions" are predominantly based on falsehoods.
From the beginning of "Hot Winter" on 2008/2/29 until the end of March(long after the operation ended), 109 Palestinians were killed - not 116. Of those 48 "were not actively participating in hostilities when killed". Note this includes Hamas naval officiers, Hamas policemen, a six month old baby who apparently was the sole occupant of the Hamas ministry of interior and people also inside a building containing militants. The number of children killed in the whole period - which goes beyond the operation - is 27. For those who can't count - like Yaman - that is less than a quarter not "a 1/3". The "children" include people like Tammer Ra'id Mahmoud Dawas, 16, killed exchanging gunfire with IDF soldiers or Bilal 'Abd Rabo Mussa al-Astal, 16, killed exchanging fire with IDF soldiers or 'Abd a-Rahim Muhammad 'Abd al-Fatah Saleh, 16, killed whilst trying to set off a charge at the border or 'Abd al-Mu'ti Osama 'Abd al-Mu'ti Sa'ed, 17, killed in exchange of gunfire etc etc etc etc.
As for SJP "innocence" about the Vilnai translation, there was such a fuss about it that is strange that such "well-informed" people weren't aware of it. To have got it off Reuters, they must have been quick off the blocks because they issued a "clarification" within hours.
Your claim that Israel is trying "legalise" targeting populated areas is exactly the opposite of what the article says. What it is saying is that it is checking whether targeting population areas that terrorists insist on fighting out of is legal or not. A more accurate statement would be that they are investigating whether it is ILLEGAL, not the mendacious spin you have put on it.
As Eamon pointed out the IRA and ETA did not generally target civilians and where they targeted civilian AREAS - at least in the IRA's case - they gave advance warning. I assume Yaman also agrees it didn't happen under Apartheid given you chose to suddenly discuss "discourse", which given that Palestinians mainly target civilians - and go to alot of effort to NOT hit soldiers - and the ANC targeted infrastructure and military targets, it is hard to see the comparisons. And Ariel, yes I absolutely disagree with his premise that Arab "guerilla" movements are the norm by deliberately and solely targeting civilians - to the exclusion of targeting enemy soldiers. There may be other groups who did it - like Red Army Faction - but they were hardly fighting "opppressive regimes". As for the London bombings, it is very bad example, they may have caused lots of damage but virtually no civilian casualties due to the advance warnings.
As for the guerilla movement against Franco, most still targeted military targets. The odd thugs demanded money and i know the Franco formed fake "guerilla" bands like the Algerian military did. But to my knowledge the systematic and deliberate targeting of solely and clearly civilian targets to the exclusion of military targets is a mostly recent and arab invention. If it was "normal", there would not be such copious internal discourse attempting to "legitimise" it.
As for "listening", the world has been doing nothing except that for the last 90 odd years. A quick glance at any history shelf on the Middle East will show you that.
Ariel, as you know I happen to think facts matter. If you have to base your argument on lies then it suggests to me you can't have much of an argument, especially when you have to resort to putting forward arguments not even you disagree with - but i suspect Yaman has some sympathy with. All I can see is the same old tired nonsense tied up in slightly better english.
PS Israel is clearly the world's most incompetent "ethnic cleanser" or "genocidal power", given that normally during a genocide the victims don't keep rapidly growing in number.... normally it is the opposite....
I think you might be interested in this...
http://censeo.cc/2008/06/irans-new-voice-inspired-by-martin-luther-king-gandhi-and-jfk/
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