I suppose I should be talking about the disaster in the Middle East, but what can I say? Obviously it is untenable to have Hamas lobbing rockets whenever they feel like it, and obviously the Israeli response is disproportionate but completely understandable in one regard, but for the life of me I can not figure out why anyone thinks bombing the living shit out of the Palestinians is going to lead towards peace. Even if the Israelis are attempting to target only those in Hamas, it goes without saying there will be collateral damage, and killing someone’s friends and family in bombing runs in reaction to military actions undertaken by someone else is a sure fire way to create more terrorists. When you consider they are trapped in the area, the Egyptians are shooting at the folks trying to get out, the IDF is quite literally shooting fish in a barrel. The whole thing is mortifying and awful, but my understanding of the ongoing crisis is as superficial as most Americans, so it would be really stupid for me to try to pretend otherwise.
The situation is just awful, as it has been for years. That region really seems to specialize in creating awful situations, and I have no idea how it will be solved.
JL
IMO, Israel is growing more terrorists. At this point who knows the best solution. I do think that preventing humanitarian aid into Gaza is wrong. The Palestinians voted for Hamas because they provided care. Bush wanted opened elections, he just didn’t like the results.
JL
John, Thanks for posting about this crisis. I have been reading BBC yesterday and today to get updates and it is such a sad situation. Nobody wins.
Dave
What a complete screw-up. No one wants to talk. Hamas won’t because they refuse to abandon their ideology (Israel doesn’t exist) in order to confront reality. Israel won’t talk because they think that not firing back 100x over when they’re attacked is a show of weakness. End result is a vicious cycle of death.
rob
Even the prompter reader(sorry, forgot his name) on CBS evening news yesterday asked the Isreali defense minister if they were worried how it looked that Israel just killed over 200 people. The def minister basically said no- they don’t give a shit. How is that for peace in the middle east.
Changeroo
A major part of the problem contributing to collateral damage is traceable to the actions of Hamas in positioning their infrastructure for weapons and fighters in the middle of locations where the Palestinians live and work.
glasgowtremontaine
The massive increase in Hamas rocket attacks was prompted, the NYT says, by Israel refusing to lift an economic blockade (which they were supposed to lift once the rocket attacks stopped — they had come down to a trickle, but not stopped completely). As a fellow clueless American, accustomed to solve problems through spending on consumer goods, I urge us all to consume more Palestinian olive oil. That will … maybe … help a tiny bit … somehow. Uh, but it’s very tasty, and fair trade, too. A superbly engineered product of which Palestinians are justly proud.
JL
Let us not forget who called for elections in Palestine! Even though Bush was told not to, he was determined to show that democracy could work everywhere.
Comrade Stuck
The depth and complexity is beyond my knowledge as well. But it seems the extremists on both sides have the floor. Hamas does crazy shit and the Israeli people, who are mostly peace loving, feel the need to put the crazy ass likudists in power. Or in this case the Kadima party, (Likud Lite). IMO Hamas and the violent groups have become self sustaining orgs at this point, needing to promote their existence for existence sake alone. I think it’s why they start this shit, knowing Israel will over react and drive average Palestinians to their side.
The Israeli elections are coming up and likely that Hamas is trying help their prefered candidate, the neocon nutbag Netanyahu, to match their own extremism and bloodthirstyness. Have at it Obama, and good luck.
JL
@glasgowtremontaine: Israel blocked even humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Ejoiner
A major part of the problem contributing to collateral damage is traceable to the actions of Hamas in positioning their infrastructure for weapons and fighters in the middle of locations where the Palestinians live and work.
I think that’s a feature not a bug. Hamas benefits from this type of over-reaction by the Israelis especially when it results in more civilian casulties.
demimondian
@JL:
That isn’t true. (Note the source, by the by.) Money graf:
Fritz
However, I am pretty sure Israel does not block humanitarian aid to Gaza through Egypt. Why does the Egyptian government not route aid through their border crossing to Gaza?
Comrade Stuck
One of the after effects of George Bush Democracy Spread of pushing the last Palestinian election was to polarize Hamas and Fatah and make Gaza really like a Hamas State or enclave, and driving out more moderate Palestinians to the WB. Creating a pustule of Israeli eliminists that can never be made peace with. I have no sympathy for Hamas and their supporters. None.
The Moar You Know
They’re too busy shooting Palestinians for that, but they’re Muslims too so that makes it OK. Seriously. Have you ever seen the Palestinians protesting against or attacking Egypt for shooting their own people?
It’s such a clusterfuck it makes me want to scream. We make fun of Americans who consistently vote against their own interests, but Americans don’t hold a candle to the folks in the Middle East, Jews and Muslims alike, who consistently and enthusiastically vote for people that will almost certainly get them killed.
TheHatOnMyCat
I’d start by questioning the underlying assumption, which is that anyone over there, on either side, is primarily interested in peace.
J. Michael Neal
demi, what is your point? That Israel allowed a tiny amount of humanitarian aid in, but not nearly enough?
mey
Isn’t it obvious? Israel can do no wrong. That’s what AIPAC makes sure our government lives by.
Comrade Kevin
@The Moar You Know:
This kind of thing isn’t even restricted to the Middle East. Look at Northern Ireland, where it took a long, long time for the people to come to their senses.
Rosali
Timing. There’s some talk that the Israelis did it now because there’s a leadership vacuum in the U.S. Bush won’t act and they don’t know where Obama stands.
JL
Why block humanitarian aid at all? A few days ago before the bombing, Israel let more ships in with aid. I just don’t understand the point. Call me naive but when children have been suffering, aid before bombardment doesn’t seem to help much.
Comrade Stuck
@mey:
Yes, that’s the politics in the US that is largely supported by American Jewish voters. But the Average People on the ground in the killing zone probably have a different take. I would guess that they are sick of it and want it to stop and that Israeli Jews by and large are appalled by the carnage inflicted by the IDF. But when suicide bombers and now home made rockets rain down by the hundreds like the past week or so, it’s not that hard to rationalize such over the top violent reprisal. It all comes back to Hamas, they are the intractable fly in the ointment that keeps this shit going.
demimondian
@J. Michael Neal: My point is that you lied about the provision of humanitarian aid.
The Grand Panjandrum
I read Steve Clemons post on this vary matter this afternoon and he makes this rather interesting point:
If Obama is serious about ME diplomacy he’s going to have to get tough with both sides. Clemons colleague Daniel Levy adds in another later post a laundry list of what is actually happening and why. I did find this little important bit encouraging if he is correct.
They both conclude the incoming administration must be bold and take the initiative to once and for all solve the problem.
Joe Buck
Let’s consider just what "only those in Hamas" means. Hamas isn’t just a guerilla/terrorist organization; they are the majority party, the elected government, the provider of social services and the largest employer in Gaza. Attacking "only those in Hamas" means attacking half the population.
J. Michael Neal
@demimondian:
Try again. I didn’t lie about anything. Do you have a larger point than that the person you were responding to was wrong/lying? If not, fine, but there’s no reason for the rest of us to care. If you do have a larger point, what was it? As far as I can tell, there is little political difference between not allowing any humanitarian aid, and not allowing more than a pittance. Either way, it’s both morally wrong, and practically counter-productive for the Israelis.
Brick Oven Bill
The key to understanding this conflict is 33:21. But in order to understand 33:21, you need to read and really think about the rest. A good place to start is Chapter 9. ‘Racism’ has nothing to do with it.
USC has established the Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement that may be of assistance.
Fritz
Joe Buck — OK, so if Hamas is half of the population in Gaza, than half of the population of Gaza desires to be at war with a well-armed neighbor. That desire often leads to unfortunate consequences.
Radon Chong
If ever two peoples have deserved each other, it’s Israel and the Palestinians.
pattonbt
There is no solution and the the outside world is powerless to change that (accept to make matters worse). The world needs to bluntly engage both sides and sanction them hard. Sure, the Palestinians will suffer the most, the world is not an equal place, but the Israelis need to come to terms with limits of their own.
This conflict is far beyond the ‘who started it’ or ‘who started the latest round’ kind of blame game. Both sides agitators suck, suck hard and are now equally guilty.
I am not ‘blaming’ Israel in any way, but peace is theirs to give and theirs only. When the ‘other side’ is essentially living in a minimum security holding camp they are in no realistic position to do anything to make lasting peace. Israel must come to terms with this and ‘turn the other cheek’ for the forseeable future.
Fair? No. Realistic? Yes. Only after a ridiculously long period of cheeck turning at all agression (coupled with serious and sustained anti-expansionist policies) will sufficient pressure be brought to the crazies on the Palestinians side to cease fire and deal.
The oppressed will always win the PR battle against the oppressor and as long as the oppressed win that battle, no deal can be reached. As long as we continue to ignore the facts as they exist now (not 60 years ago, not 40 years ago, not 20 years ago), there is no solution. Israel may be a friend to the US but the conflict now is not what it once was and it is past the time to view it through the post world war 2 guilt glasses. Israel must be the adult and suffer adult decisions. If not, this will still be going on when I die (hopefully in 50 more years).
It all sucks and I hope for peace, but I am not optimistic.
scott
the answer is a two state solution…however Israel needs to recognize that it has the support of the most powerful nation on earth…so when it does take military action, it will be viewed through the lens of Israel being a bully…the key is to recognize this ahead of time and to make whatever military actions you take, to appear to have as much restraint as possible. Everyone recognizes Israel’s right to defend itself….its the fact that they so overpower their foe, they have all the advantages…and rather than have humility, they exasperate the situation by over doing it. You’re not going to get a peace unless you restrain yourself and make real concessions…and even then its not guaranteed.
Cassidy the Racist White Man
Why should Isreal "turn the other cheek"? They’re the big kid on the block. Why isn’t Hamas expected to stop being assholes? If you kick a tiger in the ass…
sab
So is this more like the Warsaw Ghetto or Guernica? The Israelis I know are more horrified by this situation than any Americans I’ve talked to.
JL
@sab: Our MSM is petrified to have a real discussion about this, it’s unfortunate but true.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Joe Buck—OK, so if Hamas is half of the population in Gaza, than half of the population of Gaza desires to be at war with a well-armed neighbor.
Do you remember the security wall? The constant encroachments of settlers on Palestianian land? The way Palestine has been carved up into little bantustans?
I keep seeing the narrative that "Hamas started attacking out of the blue". I have to wonder precisely what those pushing that idea would do in the same situation, being slowly and quietly strangled. The violence is a cycle – but Israel has the PR advantage as long as the US media refuses to connect the dots.
AhabTRuler
The nature of the conflict is such that it is far
bettereasier to have a simplistic and facile grasp of the situation. Once you learn about the details of the problems on top of problems on top of problems the whole way down, it just gets grim and depressing. And that’s before you start to think about a way out of the cycle of violence.Fritz
I never said anyone attacked out of the blue. And, as far as I have read, Israel has not erected any fractal security wall in Gaza — just a barrier between all of Gaza and Israel. I wish Israel would just declare Gaza independent and end any restrictions on the port of Gaza City and call it good.
Josh Hueco
I’m confused. The Israelis are the ones with black on the right side of their face and white on the left side of their face, while the Palestinians are the ones with white on the right side of their face and black on the left side of their face, correct?
KG
What good is a two state solution when one state will immediately declare war on the other? I doubt there is much that can be done to bring about peace when the parties don’t seem too interested in peace. The answer, I’m afraid, will be a single state solution after a very nasty, full fledged war.
rachel
@Cassidy the Racist White Man: Hamas placed military targets in areas surrounded with civilians: schools, mosques, hospitals and the like. Why? Because they thought Israel wouldn’t retaliate against them for fear of killing innocent Palestinians? Don’t make me laugh. Hamas knew damned good and well that Israel would do exactly what Israel is doing. They want Israel to do what Israel is doing because 1) pictures of dead and maimed children and mourning parents discourage international support of Israel (Honestly, what kind of monsters would say they support that?) and 2) being bombed in spite of themselves having done nothing wrong will most likely cause even more Palestinians to support Hamas’s violent tactics against Israel.
Do you honestly think that doing exactly what an enemy knows you will do–and what that enemy wants you to do–is good strategy?
srv
What you think is a defect is really a feature to these folks. But like Sharon, they don’t think strategically until it’s too late.
An extremely weak PLO was run off and that vacuum helped create Hezbollah. Fatah was ignored and emasculated and that gave rise to Hamas. Expect Hamas’ replacement to be even worse.
Eventually, Israel will be successful in engineering their own destruction.
Comrade Stuck
@Phoenician in a time of Romans:
Hamas is the only player in the region that is irreconcilable. There one and only policy toward Israel is to destroy it and drive Israeli’s into the sea to drown. That’s it, nothing more. They are like the Terminator in the first movie. That’s all they do, and they will not stop until Israel is Dead, Period. Everything bad that Israel has done to Palestinians and are currently doing to them, is with the blessing and pride in success from Hamas. Israel is a real democracy that a majority of people want a two state peaceful existence with Palestinians. If Hamas and IJ and AAMB and the other terrorist groups would cease terror, then concessions can and would be made by Israel, by democratic processes. It would be a struggle on some of the issues like illegal WB settelments, ROR, and splitting Jerusalem, but would likely happen because most on both sides are tired of the violence. But Hamas does not want this and will, and is, doing everything it can to bring pain and victimhood to the Pal people, so they will dependent on only them, Hamas.
srv
@rachel: Would that they would act more properly and put their targets in clearly labeled areas within their thin slivers of bantustans. What immoral bastards they are for not donning Red Coats and marching in straight lines also.
The locals are not stupid morons or naive victims. They have been involved in an insurgency against an enemy flying US built aircraft and dropping US made bombs. It’s your immorality that has left them few choices. You are the monster, not them.
J. Michael Neal
Okay, let’s stipulate that this is true, purely for the sake of argument. What good is this offensive doing Israel? Even if you were100% correct, it still wouldn’t be a good idea for Israel to just start bombing the Gaza Strip. It’s a tactic that has no strategy that it helps.
The Raven
Lots of food for corvids. It’s a moral swamp, and all parties are sinking into it. It would be bad enough if it were Zionists against Arabs alone. But, of course, the refusal of the West to accept Jewish refugees before and after World War II swelled the number of Zionists with Jewish refugees from Europe. Then the conflict was taken up into the "Cold" War. The USA and the USSR pumped huge amounts of money and training into the conflict. Now it’s become a jihad, with committed fighters and well-funded allies on both sides. So many people have died, wounded, or been displaced that everyone in the region either has been affected or knows someone who has been. Almost everyone is afraid for their own safety and the safety of their family and friends. Many people on both sides want revenge, and Arab ideas of revenge are exceptionally brutal, which in turn provokes brutality from the Israelis. It is going to take miracles, or at least a committed alliance outside the region, to stop the conflict. Krawk!
Mnemosyne
You answered your own question: if Israel is the big kid on the block who can do infinitely more damage to the Palestinians than the Palestinians can do in return, it is Israel’s moral responsibility to dial down the violence. Otherwise, they’re nothing but bullies who get pissed off when their victim has the temerity to hit back.
There is no "good guy" or "bad guy" in this conflict. It’s two assholes with varying degrees of power who both insist that they’ll stop hitting if the other guy stops hitting first … and then keeps hitting even when the other guy stops.
Comrade Stuck
I didn’t say it was a "good" idea. Of course it’s not, for Israel or anybody else, except Hamas. What I said was, it is an understandable overreaction to having people launching hundreds of Rockets into Israel’s civilian population, every day like the past week. If a neighboring county was doing that to your county for a period of days and weeks, randomly killing anybody in the wrong place at the wrong time, what would your reaction be?. Restraint?
Look, the upcoming election has some to do with Olmert overdoing things, that and the fact he was largely seen as weak in last years war with Hezbollah. He wants to look tougher than fellow lukudite Bibi Netanyahu. But also, I think Israel is fed up and they’ve got GB egging them on, plus the fact that Hamas is now concentrated in Gaza.
But it will backfire on them, and it should. Used to, American presidents could and did restrain the IDF in these situations, repub and dem. I hope Obama stands up to Israel and cools off their overreactions. We shall see, beginning in 23 days.
Darkrose
I still come back to the idea that we should move everyone out beyond the blast radius and drop a fucking tac nuke on Jerusalem. People have been fighting over that damned city for over 2,000 years, so fine: nobody gets it. If the parties involved insist on acting like badly-behaved, heavily-armed five-year-olds, perhaps they should be treated as such.
(And yes, I know that this isn’t a real solution. This is why I’m not a politician, because I’m all about Alexander’s solution to the Gordian Knot.)
kay
I’m no fan of President Bush, but I have observed US Presidents grapple with this issue my entire adult life.
Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and now Bush II.
Democrats, Republicans, liberal, moderate and conservative.
No progress. Carter engaged too much, Bush II, not enough?
I’m reading up on Obama’s prospects. Biden and HRC "get" Israel, "in their hearts", I’m told, and that’s a necessary attribute, because they have the trust of Israeli leadership.
But Bush II had their trust, and Clinton before him. Didn’t get them far.
I’ve lost faith in American leadership’s ability to impact this situation, quite frankly. I don’t know that the perfect confluence of events + Israeli + Palestinian + US leaders will ever occur, AT THE SAME TIME, and that seems to be the ever-shifting "ideal" set of conditions called for, to craft a compromise.
That’s a pipe dream.
Brick Oven Bill
‘Pakistan’ was a previous example of a two state solution and Gandhi got his medal. But, guess what? Then Pakistan wanted to annex Kashmir. If you listen to the speeches, there are always references to land. This geographic focus is based in the texts.
It really is a brilliant system. If one did not have to abandon scientific and rational thought, it would be attractive. The problem is that if you squeeze an earner too hard, he stops earning for you.
The modern consequence of this, given the high birth rates and impending failure of Globalism, is sobering. This is why our previous policy of isolation is the correct policy for America.
Or we could give back Spain, Southern France, and Italy. Maybe that would work.
The Other Steve
Just let ’em all fight it out. The worst thing we can do is try to step in and stop it before they’re done. Sooner or later the damage inflicted will be so bad that someone will finally surrender.
And then we can have peace negotiations.
Cassidy the Racist White Man
@rachel: When you have the trump card of overwhelming force, it is smart. Sun Tzu can only carry you so far.
This goes back to them voting these fools in office. I have just as much sympathy for them as the idiots who voted for Bush (present company excluded). When you vote violent ideologues into office, don’t be surprised when you are at war.
Fixed for reality.
@Mnemosyne:
Isreal has no such responsibility to an aggressor. I’m not saying there is a good guy or a bad guy. What I am saying is if you go smack the biggest kid on the block in the nose, don’t be surprised if he kicks your ass. Life is not a Disney movie.
srv
@Darkrose: You missed a step. First convince the evangelicals the 2nd Coming is at hand and airlift them to Jerusalem. Red states could then be offered to Israelis and Palestinians willing to cohabitate.
Fritz
I’m with The Other Steve on this — I would be good with cutting off all US funding for Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and the PLO, and then we can talk with the survivors.
J. Michael Neal
You do realize that Olmert isn’t running, right?
jon
The "let them fight it out" scenario has already been tried. Israel kicked butt in 1948, 1967, 1973, and again and again ever since. But they showed restraint and didn’t push the people into the sea. Would the Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians, Lebanese, and Iraqis (and others) have shown that much restraint had they won? The problem for Israel was that the people of the occupied territories were still there, had no interest in joining an Israeli state, the Israelis had no interest in letting them become Israeli, and Israel was left kind of like a dog that caught a car: can’t eat it, but the world knew how tough it was.
Israel should wall up Gaza and leave it to rot on the vine. The West Bank is trickier because of Jerusalem, which makes that solution unfeasible there. But Gaza should just be belligerently ignored and responded to with bulldozers rather than rockets. One rocket=one block flattened. When Gaza is nothing but a used car lot with its citizenry reduced to being parking attendants and squeegee guys, maybe they’ll stop their bullshit. Israel has a right to exist, Gazans have a responsibility to stop firing rockets into its neighbor’s territory, and as much of a clusterfuck the place is, I generally take Israel’s side because as much as they are assholes, they are assholes playing defense most of the time.
J. Michael Neal
This goes back a hell of a lot longer than Hamas has even existed, let alone been in power. Exactly who do you think the Palestinians should have been voting for? From their perspective, they’ve been at war for either 40 or 60 years, depending. They didn’t have any choices that had a realistic chance at obtaining peace. So, they voted for the party that could at least provide essential services.
The position of a Palestinian choosing to vote for either Fatah or Hamas has exactly zero in common with an American choosing whether to vote for Bush or Gore. It’s a useless analogy.
J. Michael Neal
Yeah, this approach has done so well for the Israelis.
Fritz
Jon — the problem is that Israel won’t fully relinquish control of Gaza. They won’t let the people of Gaza run their own port, for instance.
Comrade Stuck
@J. Michael Neal:
Livni is the Kadima party candidate. And Olmert, like most leaders, cares about his legacy and party, and correcting whatever perceptions of weakness, and fail, history may hold, or what he fears it will hold for his leadership..
GSD
The Palestinians had an election choice between Mahmoud Abbas, a feckless party hack that had the backing of the corrupt political establishment or Hamas, a party led by a pack of power hungry religious fanatics that vowed to fight anyone who attacked them.
They chose to vote the same way the US voted in 2004 when given the same choice.
-GSD
Comrade Stuck
@Fritz:
There are two hundred million Arabs surrounding Israel, a country of roughly 6 million AND around 100 to 200 nuclear weapons. What survivors in the M.E.?, and possibly anywhere and everywhere on Earth?
Fulcanelli
@srv: Now there’s the smartest thing I’ve heard yet on this mess. And when the fundies rapture, we can give their stuff to the refugees to help ’em out.
Fritz
Comrade Stuck — People are pretty resilient. Even at the worst, this would be no "On The Beach". And, who knows, people in the middle east may even show some sense. It’s possible.
Comrade grumpy realist
I had a friend, background Christian Arab, who was born in Bethlehem. His assessment was: "everyone in the Mideast is nuts." (He got out as quickly as he could, emigrated with family to the US and has happily started several high-tech companies.)
A.J.P. Taylor made a similar comment in one of his essays: "There must be something in the Mideast which drives men insane."
demimondian
@GSD: That isn’t fair.
Hamas has run an efficient, effective, and comprehensive social support network in Gaza for nigh on two decades now. Fatah? Fatah is a bunch of feckless, corrupt, self-serving thieves, just as it was in 2006.
Of course the Gazans voted for the better party! What would anyone expect?
Shiva
I think the idea is for the people of Gaza to figure out that it’s not in their interest for Hamas to use them as human shields. Then they might decide to have a government that wasn’t Hamas. Maybe even a government that was happy to live in peace with Gaza’s neighbors, Israel and Egypt.
The funny thing is, with the world economy weakening, not many people are enthusiastic about Hamas resuming its rocket launches. Let’s face it, Hamas isn’t giving its friends in the media much to work with these days. I suspect that a lot of people would be very happy to see Hamas disappear, and to see the people of Gaza throw away their rockets and get a life.
Comrade Stuck
@Fritz:
LOL, That’s what Gulliver said about the Lilliputians.
Mnemosyne
Given how childishly people on both sides are acting, I don’t think you can count on either side to not treat life like a Disney movie. Apparently both the Israelis and the Palestinians think they’re re-fighting "Star Wars" and that the other side is the Empire.*
If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result, I think it’s time to start pumping some heavy-duty anti-psychotics into the water supply for both sides.
* Yes, I know "Star Wars" isn’t a Disney movie. So sue me.
Fulcanelli
@Comrade grumpy realist:
Why yes, there are 3 things: Religion, beautiful, dark eyed, dark haired women, and all sorts of barbaric, proto-medieval religious rules governing how men interact, or more to the point, can’t interact with these women. If there’s a better recipe for random acts of violence and aggression, I haven’t seen it. (100+ degree heat doesn’t help either) Jes’ sayin…
Mnemosyne
As always, hilzoy is able to say what I’m thinking better than I can:
DrDave
I am a somewhat informed American on this subject and have discussed and argued it with those who side with the Palestinians as well as those who think that Israel should take a tougher line (Yes, there are people with that opinion. Some of them are friends of mine.).
That said: Bush dropped the ball on US engagement in the process. We haven’t had a full time envoy to the Middle East to even keep channels of discussion open since probably Dennis Ross was there. Bush’s one contribution–the so-called Road Map–could have been scribbled on the back of a dirty napkin over lunch but he never followed it up with any sort of effort to see it through.
The question of peaceful coexistence between Israel and the Arabs who occupy the West Bank and Gaza hinges on a couple of things. First, the Arabs need to decide that they want a viable state more than they want to live in a continual state of warfare with Israel. They are not there yet, apparently. Part of it is pride and not want to be seen as surrendering. Part of it is stubbornness. And part is, I think, that their position allows them to play the victim card even as they support and engage in terrorism against Israel.
Second, they need to recognize that there are issues that are absolute non-negotiable to Israel. There are two such issues that come to mind: There will be no right of return. And Israel’s capital is and will remain in Jerusalem.
Third, the borders of a new Palestinian state will approximate the green line (the pre-1967 war border) but Israel will trade off some land on their side in exchange for other land on the West Bank side occupied by some settlements. There are a few settlements that are, for all practical purposes, going to be impossible to dismantle and Israel will trade compensatory land to keep the land these settlements occupy.
And that’s it. (It seems so simple yet is so complicated…)
ThymeZoneThe Plumber
This.
Joe Max
"Normally the patterns of history are reassuring. To hear of Tsarist Russia pressing for warm-water ports or 18th century England fighting hegemony on the continent or Ming China clashing with Japan over the fate of Korea is to feel a continuity, a comprehensibility, in human affairs. But in ‘The Jewish War’ (a History of the Jewish Revolt in AD 60), the shock of recognition is just a shock. Here, sixty generations ago, is nearly the same cast of characters engaged in exactly the same obsessive, vicious and fatal behavior for the same terrifying reasons on the same cursed, reeking, ugly chunk of land." — P.J. O’Rourke
Brick Oven Bill
Hilzoy is projecting her Swedish mind onto others. It is arrogant, if you think about it. She has been working to bring reason to Pakistan and look what it has yielded. Public policy should be governed by reason, not hope.
Israel has a right to defend its population. The Muslims should stop firing rockets at Jews. If they did this, the conflict would end.
DrDave
@Shiva:
Bingo.
rachel
@So, if your country were being blockaded and bombed on a regular basis by a much more powerful enemy, you would advocate surrender? It is the only logical thing to do.
DrDave
@Brick Oven Bill:
There is a very popular bumper sticker sold in markets in Israel. (Most are probably bought by American tourists.) It says:
"If the Arabs would put down their guns, there would be no war.
If the Jews put down their guns, there would be no Israel."
AhabTRuler
I think that this talks about choice and government in a way that has no real meaning on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank.
ThymeZoneThe Plumber
The world is better off without Saddam.
Slogans are great. 60 years of war, and we are posting slogans.
rachel
@Cassidy the Racist White Man: Oh, by the way Cassidy:
That "overwhelming force" is working out for them and us so well. Why, it’s winning us friends and allies all over this area where we badly need them.
demimondian
@rachel: What should you do? Well, we know what history in that area shows.
The original Arab lands in Israel were set up by England to allow the Palestinians to do exactly what they now find the Israelis doing — firing from a superior position. Then, on three later occasions, Israel was the target of wars of extermination, spawned by Arab states, allegedly on behalf of the Palestinians. In each case, the Russians who had armed the Arab states were convinced that their proxies would win easily — and, in each case, they were stunned to find out that they were wrong, and, two of the three times, catastrophically wrong.
So, if you were Israel, and were under air and ground attack from a superior foe, what would you do? Obviously, you’d repel the attacks, and then stop.
Oh. You meant the Palestinians? Gosh — what a shock.
Let me turn the question around. If you’d been a target of such invasions on four separate occasions, would you be terribly sympathetic to an "oppressed minority" which had cheered for each of the attempts to annihilate you? Which had run a sixty year campaign of indiscriminate murder? And which was still led by a party which called for your elimination and extinction?
Or would you feel that any trust would be likely repaid with betrayal, thinking of Oslo and other opinings? And, thinking so, consider that that any gesture of compassion would be interpreted — yet again — as weakness, and, when attacked, immediately discard such responses as foolish?
Seriously, when you get on your high horse and preach, you do need to remember that the Israeli government is facing an enemy — not an opponent — which has refused to make the most basic of steps, preventing attacks from its own lands.
demimondian
@AhabTRuler: You miss the point.
Hamas has been an excellent domestic party for the Gazans. Given the facts on the ground, in fact, the party has shown itself to be an exceptionally effective local government. To be sure, their foreign policy has somewhat unpleasant consequences, but, their domestic policies have improved the well being of men (albeit, no, not women) throughout Gaza.
Brick Oven Bill
"60 years"?
Thymezone, do you know what a dhimmi is?
demimondian
@rachel: It could be argued that the best thing which could possibly happen for the United States would be for all the oil barons to turn their backs on us.
Yes, our economy would be devastated for a couple of years, but we’d be forced to finally move off of an oil fueled economy, and would finally do so.
Now, remind me, except for oil, why I care in the least about the ruling family of Saudi Arabia — or, for that matter, the mullahs in Qum?
DrDave
You also need to remember that if Israel loses once, it’s over for Israel.
Mnemosyne
You really think the Israeli settlers on Palestinian territory would peacefully return within the borders of Israel if the Palestinians just lay down arms? Really?
I know people like to pretend otherwise, but the fault is not all on the Palestinian side. Israel has plenty of wacky extremists who will oppose any kind of peace settlement with violence. Ask Leah Rabin what she thinks.
rachel
@demimondian: And the Israelis have not kept faith with the Palestinians either. AFAIC, they both look like ducks, they both walk like ducks and they both quack like ducks. So why is the one wearing the Star of David a sacred cow?
ThymeZoneThe Plumber
Only if you can make it into a slogan.
I want an all-slogan world. Don’t you?
"God gave us this land."
Now that’s a slogan we can believe in.
demimondian
@DrDave: That’s not true.
In fact, Israel has lost several times — each of her aggressive wars (oh, yeah…those) has been an abject failure in the end. 1967 did result in significant territory being captured, but that was as a result of turning the tide of an invasion. All other aggressive actions have led to expensive stalemates (at best) or to outright defeat, at worst.
This is an aggressive action. Israel could win a Pyrrhic victory, I suppose, by exterminating the Gazans, but anything short of that will simply be another cycle of expensive stalemate. Since exterminating the population of Gaza should not be a serious consideration, that means another expensive stalemate.
ThymeZoneThe Plumber
Never preach from anything taller than a mule, that’s my advice.
demimondian
@ThymeZoneThe Plumber: "Might makes right."
Can you top that, huh, punk? Can you top that?
rachel
@DrDave: Some of Israel’s actions (and reactions) are not exactly helping me to care much about what happens to Israel.
Edit: It’s a shame because I’d like to see everybody settle down and give peaceful coexistence a chance, but there it is.
Mnemosyne
As I mentioned above, during the cease-fire rocket attacks against Israel went from 200 a month to 6 a month. But I guess that because the attacks did not go to zero, that completely justified Israel continuing to block humanitarian assistance from reaching the Palestinians during the cease-fire.
Out of curiosity, is there any action of Israel’s that you would concede might have been bad strategy, or has everything they’ve done been completely justified?
demimondian
@ThymeZoneThe Plumber: I’m in favor of preaching from the safety of thousands of miles away.
Does that work for you?
demimondian
@Mnemosyne: Not true. At the end of the formal cease-fire, Hamas resumed its previous barrage. Between Saturday and the time Israel launched its attacks, at least 110 rockets had been fired from Gaza into South Israel.
(And for those of you keeping score, those were being fired into pre-1967 borders.)
ThymeZoneThe Plumber
Yes, thousands of miles away from you works for me.
Tens of thousands would be better, but I have to take what you give me.
ThymeZoneThe Plumber
Sure. "Ends justify means."
Mnemosyne
What does Hamas’ actions after the end of the cease-fire have to do with Israel’s actions during the cease-fire? I mean, other than the fact that Israel’s actions during the cease-fire probably contributed to the Palestinians’ decision to end the cease-fire.
rachel
@demimondian: I wouldn’t so much mind if they just did that, but chances are that they’ll keep selling us oil and attack our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan instead.
demimondian
@rachel: Because each of them is a state with a right to exist. As long as Israel’s right to exist is threatened — and it is — they have an absolute trump card, legitimate self-defense. It’s very easy to forget that fact, but, whatever you may like or dislike, Israel is responding to an attack within its own borders, by all international standards.
Hamas is, under international law, the aggressor here. Once the rocket barrage resumed, Hamas lost any standing to complain. It sucks, but, really, all they had to do was listen to the Egyptians, when they begged Hamas to extend the cease-fire. They chose not to do so.
AhabTRuler
@demimondian: No, I think you miss the point.
What precisely does the word "government" mean to an average Palestinian? What does it guarantee them? How does it represent them? Can it protect them or defend them? What do the concepts of "protection" and "defense" even mean in this context?
We are discussing these concepts in a Westphalian Nation-State sense, a yet the Gaza and West Bank don’t even exist in that world. Palestinians aren’t even citizens because they don’t have anything to be a citizen of. This isn’t just an argument for a Two-state solution, it dictates attitudes and consequences on the ground.
Brick Oven Bill
My friend Thyme;
Please reference the link provided above and look at 9:29. The tribute was often required to be given with an open mouth, so that spit could be injected. The belief system is very powerful. And I respect Israel for resisting it. Nobody likes uppity dhimmis. The Armenian women were burnt in locked buildings after the men were enlisted and marched into the desert.
This is not a 60-year conflict.
TenguPhule
Ha! Good one.
No other nation with any military whatsoever on Earth would do that. None.
That they then ask Israel to do it only allows Israel to point out the hypocrisy of those asking.
Face it, any Western country with a neighbor that openly takes credit for hitting civilian targets would be bombed to the stone age.
We can’t even lecture them on the moral high ground since Iraq. So yeah, good luck with that tarpit.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
demimondian
@Mnemosyne: What actions? You mean blocking off the importation of weapons and dual use items? Allying with Egypt — an ally of Hamas — to shut off illicit commerce?
If the barrage had ever actually *stopped*, you might have an argument which wouldn’t be a joke, As it never did — "slowing down" is not stopping, you know — your argument is utterly inane.
TenguPhule
Hamas never stopped shooting during the ceasefire. That’s what.
ThymeZoneThe Plumber
The surge is working.
TenguPhule
Yes. Law on their side and all that.
When you’re still shooting, it’s not a ceasefire.
Mnemosyne
Also, I don’t think it’s beside the point to note that even after the formal cease-fire was arranged in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republican Army formally disbanded, splinter groups continued killing civilians. Demanding that every single instance of terrorism by any Palestinian completely cease before peace can even be discussed is unrealistic, to say the least.
demimondian
@AhabTRuler: Hamas is a government, in the Wastphalian sense of the word. The Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank looked very rationally at two competing governmental organizations in 2006, and selected the one which provided effective government services (education, health care, food, shelter, domestic policing, and other necessities.)
Since the election, Hamas has *continued* to deliver those services. That is the hall-mark of an effective government.
TenguPhule
Yeah, it’s called the heat.
That also explains Texas, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico.
mapaghimagsik
What a freaking mess. With as much has gone on, I don’t think there will be peace there in my lifetime, especially since we’re still stuck with slogans.
Shygetz
It’s funny how each side always begins their history of the region at a point most convenient to their preconceived narrative. To pretend that England imported Arabs to Palestine is beyond insincere, bordering on insulting. Both sides have valid historical claims to the land. Both have valid gripes about how they were treated in the retreat from colonialism, as well as numerous other grievances that stem from various areas both ancient and modern. Both are now taking it out on each other. Yes, Israel is in a superior military position to the Palestinians, but Israel’s position in world opinion (which they rely upon for external aid and legitimacy) is being sorely hurt. Arabs are very experienced in asymmetrical warfare and have a nearly limitless supply of martyrdom enthusiasts. So, short of Israel committing genocide, neither side can "win" this war.
So sure, Israel, go ahead and punch Hamas in the nose because you’re bigger and they hit you most recently (I wont get into the argument about who hit who "first" as it has no right answer, with the value of "first" set to suit whatever argument is being made). But smacking the Palestinians in bulk won’t get you what you want, unless what you want is just dead Palestinians (and, inevitably, dead Israelis), so everyone should quit pretending that this has anything to do with "self-defense". It’s counting coup, Middle East style, and nothing more.
TenguPhule
Demanding that Hamas stop attacking is unreasonable? Because you know, they were openly taking credit for the attacks. Or do we all pretend that your average Palestinian on the street has access to military grade rockets?
mapaghimagsik
@demimondian:
I understand that Israel might stumble upon that final solution eventually.
AhabTRuler
@demimondian: sovereignty.
TenguPhule
Obviously you’re not familiar with counting coup.
It’s bloody shirts back and forth.
Every time the pot settles down, one side or the other stirs it up again.
At this point I suspect majorities in both sides support a solution that leaves the other side extinct.
Cain
@Brick Oven Bill:
Just a correction, Gandhi did not put forth the two state solution. In fact he wanted an united India. What happened instead was that the British started whispering in Jinnah’s ear (a muslim aristocrat, not a crazy) and got him scared about a possible dominance by the hindus. He then demanded the country be broken up where there was a muslim majority and it was called Pakistan. So India was divided into Pakistan and East Pakistan (which became Bangladesh later)
The two state solution was never really a solution, more of a compromise. I know Pakistanis whose family comes from Bangalore.
(and thanks for spelling Gandhi correctly)
Not going into the Kashmir issue…
cain
Mnemosyne
I forgot, you’re the person who posted a link to al-Jazeera that said that the United Nations was complaining that the Israelis were not allowing humanitarian aid in during the cease-fire as proof that aid really was being allowed in.
I don’t think there’s any point in trying to discuss this with you any longer since you seem to think that phrases like "The UN has said that the blockade is a ‘direct contravention of international human rights and humanitarian law’ and should be ended immediately" mean that Israel completely followed the terms of the cease-fire and it’s completely the Palestinians’ fault that things fell apart.
An eye for an eye may leave the whole world blind, but in your case, you’d still be slashing out to see if you could cut off someone’s hand into the bargain.
TenguPhule
"Nobody could have seen this coming"-Bush Administration policy on everything.
ThymeZoneThe Plumber
I’m not sure I did this right, I couldn’t find what you are referring to. I found my ass, using both hands, though. But anyway, if you can point me in some foolproof manner, such as by sending me your credit card number and expiration date, I will try again.
But meanwhile, did you really write this?
So, you’re all tongue in cheek, right? And no, I don’t mean your tongue in somebody else’s cheek, I mean, you are having a little fun with us. Eh? Come clean, or you will burn in hell for eternity.
Comrade Stuck
@demimondian:
This wasn’t an existential war like the major ones the past 60 years. It was a half ass operation that didn’t have a chance of stopping the rocket attacks. If it wanted, Israel could have laid waste to southern Lebanon and killed every living creature. In all the major wars that threatened Israel’s existence, they have utterly defeated their attackers. In the 73 Yom Kippur war, they got caught with their pants down and nearly got over run by Egypt. For some reason, Egypt stopped to scratch their ass long enough for the IDF to get their shit together. I suspect this is what Dr Dave was talking about.
ThymeZoneThe Plumber
Hey! A little respect?
Okay, you’re right. So FUCK YOU.
Heh.
But anyway, why don’t YOU try living with a heat rash in your crotch six months out of the year? Maybe that will teach you a little something.
Cain
@Fritz:
That would be supremely stupid. They’d smuggle in some nasty ass weapon to use on the Israelis. We’re talking about Hamas here an ideological enemy to Israel that apparently is still stupid enough to keep on attacking for some unfathomable purpose. They don’t want to use negotiations they just want to create death so they can get more followers. They are a bunch of whack jobs.
Israel should not be taking the bait and doing this. There must be some way to stop qassam rockets from falling. If they can eliminate their main method of attacking it might help.
cain
ps I’m not taking sides per se. I’ve fluctuated on both sides. But I think there is just a lack of honest leadership. We could have fixed this a while back if Arafat wasn’t a total asshole.
Shygetz
@TenguPhule: I am quite familiar with counting coup. The idea is the same–the winning of status for one and one’s family for daring to attack the "other". It’s present in both hard-line movements, from pre-teen on–kids are encouraged in minor acts of violence and vandalism against the "other" by increased stature, with the stature increasing with the risk of the act and symbolic measure of the victory obtained. The sheer brutality of it all is why I modified it with "Middle East style".
Mnemosyne
Do you mean the current attacks that occurred after the cease-fire ended, or the few that happened during the cease-fire? I think some people (not necessarily you) are trying to conflate events during the cease-fire and events after the cease-fire ended.
If we’re talking about the attacks that happened during the cease-fire then, yes, I think that deciding that those attacks were worth blockading all of Gaza was as unreasonable as it would have been for the British to decide that the continuing attacks by the splinter group The Real IRA meant that the entire peace process should be stopped. Fortunately for everyone in Northern Ireland and Britain, that was not the decision that the British made.
Cain
@Fulcanelli:
So what you’re saying is this is a sexual problem? Well shiiit… I can help out right now..
cain
Cain
@DrDave:
Are Palestinians, Arabs? Palestinians are one of the most beautiful people on the planet, both men and women. I don’t know how they got it, but damn…
Arabs tend to have harsher features or at least the ones I’ve seen. They are okay, but they can’t hold a candle to Palestinians and Persians in terms of looks.
cain
Mnemosyne
I think that’s pretty much irrefutable. Arafat did far more harm than good for the Palestinians, and he’s a large part of why they (and the Israelis) are stuck where they are today.
Lupin
Make you miss the Roman Empire, eh? Tough but fair, a great people the Romans. (snark from LIFE OF BRIAN.)
If there was the will, we should send the UN with, say, Chinese troops or any other presumably neutral country (ie without a colonial past in the region), occupy Israel, forcibly remove the settlers, and reorganize the entire area by force as per the 1967 map.
It won’t happen of course.
Brick Oven Bill
I have a rule against posting after two beers but here we go anyways:
“I found my ass, using both hands”…
9:29 Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.
This means submission, and then tribute. There is a historical record. To my friend Thyme and President Bush: just read the books. Reading is good. You must do it unafraid.
Hob
Speaking of things that aren’t helpful, will it ruin the seriousness of the blog if I rant about a linguistic pet peeve?
"the IDF is quite literally shooting fish in a barrel"
No, actually it is quite metaphorically doing that.
There’s probably a barrel somewhere in Gaza with fish in it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it caught a stray round these days, but that’s not what you meant.
TheHatOnMyCat
Oh, I have read that book. I think it’s called "Obama is a Muslim." Thanks for the tip.
So, if I understand you correctly (which I have no reason to think is your actual goal), then muslim=bad?
Got it. I will have that burned onto my forearm so that I will have it ready whenever I need the information.
Thanks, my friend Brick Head Bill!
Hob
Aw that’s sweet, Bill is citing the Quran again like he used to do every few days on Obsidian Wings. If I remember correctly, he would never actually name the book — either because saying its name will cause it to appear, or because it’s just fun to post cryptic little doom-nuggets and watch the poor naive liberals try to figure out what the fuck you’re talking about.
But I worry that he’s either losing energy for this crusade, or having an attack of tendonitis, because those sura and verse numbers are only appearing once instead of the way he used to do it–
* 9:29 * 9:29 * 9:29 * 9:29 * 9:29 * 9:29 * 9:29 * 9:29 *
–which really added to the force of the argument. If we all end up enslaved by Saladin(*), it’ll be because Bill didn’t repeat those numbers often enough.
(*) that is, if the Mexicans, Jews, blacks, and Chicago Democrats don’t get us first
Brick Oven Bill
Muslim does not equal bad; Muslims are people. But Islam is somewhat attractive to me. Which should worry you TheHatOnMyCat.
pattonbt
@TenguPhule:
Your reply is why I know this conflict can not be solved in the short term. No country is ever asked to restrain itself and would not be faulted for not restraining itself. But short of that, Israels other real alternative to ending this in the near future is Darkrose’s option – lay waste.
All my point is that the Palestinians, short of laying down and dying, have no real way to ensure an equitable peace in the short term. Israel holds all the cards and has to compromise first.
These violent half measures on both sides only ensure the violent half measures will continue forever.
Both sides suck and I have contempt for all the extremists. Nobody has clean hands anymore and the ‘history’ of the conflict is meaningless to where it stands now. Both sides have enough atrocities on their own hands to warrant generations of hate from their opponent.
jon
The cease fire ended, then 110 missiles flew from Gaza, and then Israel responded to that. Unless the timing is wrong, then I’d have to say that it looks pretty damn conclusive that Hamas deserves everything it’s gotten.
I know you can’t really look at any single thing or small timeframe in the Middle East and assess blame or right or wrong, but until we start to do so there will never be any progress toward sanity in the region. Each side has plenty of reasons to be hateful, mistrustful, and righteous, but history is an asshole. To right the wrongs, the Caananites should be given their land back. I doubt many would be happy with what would become of the Temple Mount under those circumstances.
To put it in a more modern way: Festivus is over. The airing of grievances and the feats of strength have already happened, and Israel won the wrestling contest.
TheHatOnMyCat
It takes a worried man to sing a worried song
It takes a worried man to sing a worried song
It takes a worried man to sing a worried song
I’m worried now but I won’t be worried long
Mnemosyne
If your assumption is that Israel did absolutely nothing to provoke the Palestinians during the cease-fire, then I suppose you could come to that conclusion. But it seems like a pretty convenient place to draw the line: "Sure, the Palestinians are pissed off that the Israelis blocked food, medication and fuel during the cease-fire, but now the cease-fire is over! What are they still so upset about?"
This is why my position for years has been that UN peacekeepers should occupy the West Bank and Gaza and Israel should patrol its own borders and interior. If any terrorists get inside Israel, they can deal with it, but the UN will be responsible for stopping the rocket attacks from within Gaza. Putting the people who have a vested interest in starving out the Palestinians in charge of their food supply, which is the situation we’re in now, is absolutely insane.
Brick Oven Bill
I’m feeling peaceful and easy. And I’m going to sleep. May God help us all, learn to grow potatoes.
jon
When the Palestinians are starving rather than shooting missiles into Israel, then I’ll believe the blockade is too oppressive.
Darkrose
@jon:
That’s right. If we don’t treat those brown people like the subhumans they are and grind them down under our bootheels where they belong, we’ll never get anywhere!
jon
@Darkrose,
There’s a blockade to stop the importation of illegal weapons. But illegal weapons still get imported. Is it a clerical shipping error or a conscious effort to get illegal weapons? I think the latter, but either way, Israel can demand that packages going into Gaza don’t contain illegal weapons.
And if that interferes with food and medicine and fuel shipments, tough shit! Some people missing a meal vs. some getting blown up, it’s all a big fucking tragedy to one degree or another. But until rockets stop flying from Gaza, my sympathy for the Palestinians has a very small margin.
rachel
@jon: How many Israelis did those rockets kill or wound, anyway?
The Raven
Oh, one other thing would work–if the Arabs and the Israelis made an alliance, they could tell the rest of the world to take a hike. Be a smart thing to do, really–most of the region’s problems have been the result of interventions to various ends. But it would take leaders with the courage to see beyond revenge. Krawk!
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Hamas is the only player in the region that is irreconcilable. There one and only policy toward Israel is to destroy it and drive Israeli’s into the sea to drown.
And yet, ever so strangely enough, it is Israeli troops on other people’s soil, and Israeli settlers displacing other people from their land. A difficult fact to reconcile with the official rhetoric, but one which makes it all the more necessary to paint the other side as truly to blame…
vivelame
Illegal according to whose laws??
Chuck Butcher
I can’t for the life of me figure out why Americans want to pick sides in this mess. I can figure out the government, but this stuff here and at my place seems silly. I’m pretty sure both places are run by assholes. A bunch of theocratic racists – both of them.
Darkrose
@jon:
Would this be more of that "compassionate conservatism" we’ve heard so much about?
Who cares if Palestinian kids die, right? They’re just going to grow up to be terrorists anyway!
For the record, I think that anyone who targets civilians in a war, either deliberately or by writing them off as "collateral damage" is slightly lower than pond scum. See also:
Hamas
Israel
Saddam Hussein
Al Qaida
The U. S.
Nobody’s hands are clean in that part of the world, and no one has any claim to the moral high ground. It’s past time we stopped playing, "Whose fault is it really" and started seriously trying to move toward an equitable solution.
rachel
@Darkrose: That post does smack of the sort of mindless bellicosity that’s the wingnut’s way of relating to outsiders, doesn’t it.
bernarda
Israeli critics of their government’s policy is more severe than Americans’. The Israeli paper Haaretz has an article by Gideon Levy,
"What began yesterday in Gaza is a war crime and the foolishness of a country."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050459.html
And I fail to see by a suicide bombing is worse than dropping millions of cluster bombs on Lebanon or launching all these guided bombs on Gaza today. Apparently using high-tech is alright, but some poor fool who kills himself is terrorism.
DrDave
@Mnemosyne:
That’s reasonable. And my guess is that most Israelis would support such a plan. When we were there a couple of years ago, the impression I got is that the Israelis are tired of living in a state of continual threat of war. And this was right about the time Hamas kidnapped Gilad Shalit and weeks before the war in Lebanon. The fatigue can only be greater today.
One of the things that pissed me off about Bush’s foreign policy is that he completely disengaged the US from the Israeli – Palestinian peace process. There was a little lip service and his so called "Road Map" but not a lot else.
DrDave
@Darkrose:
That’s true. Unfortunately, the beginning of any equitable solution has to include Hamas recognizing Israel’s right to exist. When you get them to agree to that, get back to me.
Comrade Stuck
@Phoenician in a time of Romans:
The cold fact is that Israel was attacked by a number of Arab countries in 1967, that was supported and cheered by Palestinians on their side of the Green Line, in hopes Israel would be pushed into the sea. They lost, and Israel won that war of aggression against it, which means they captured the WB. The settlements grew from that event and remained even though Israel was willing to give back much of the WB it deemed not essential for it’s security.
It is true that they have been and currently are a roadblock to any agreement and their continued existence is part and parcel to internal Israeli politics, but they were won in a defensive war by Israel. Most Israeli’s want to give the land back to a Palestinian state in exchange for Arabs not trying to kill them on a daily basis, and willing to accept their existence. Israel has it’s share of religious wingnuts ( but still a small minority in Israel) that the Hamas wingnuts give influence to by their violent actions. It is a negative feedloop of violence by extremists on both sides, kept going by Hamas.
Michael D.
Here’s my take on who is to blame for the carnage in the Middle East. You have to ask yourself two questions:
1. If Hamas and others in the territories laid down their weapons and decided to live in Peace, would Israel also lay down its weapons and live with them peacefully?
2. If Israel laid down its weapons and decided to live in peace, would Hamas and others also stop attacking and live with Israel in peace?
My guess is that the answers are Yes and No, respectively.
I’m not saying that Israel is not being a little disproportionate here. But I am not going to blame them either. If someone could tell me something Israel could do, short of every Jew packing up and leaving, that would satisfy Hamas and stop the terrorist attacks and suicide bombings, then I am sure I’m not the only one in the world who would like to hear it.
It’s so easy to criticize the powerful player, but sometimes they are in the right – even if they are responding disproportionately.
Michael D.
@Comrade Stuck:
Thank you.
Lupin
I respectfully disagree with #154 and #155.
I was hugely pro-Israel until the beginning of the Israeli settlements after the Six-Day War, which I saw even then as a Treaty of Versailles-type mistake that would come back to haunt Israel.
If Israel wished to protect itself, they should have built military outposts (and indeed did so) on the West Bank, etc., that could have been easily dismantled or grandfathered under later treaties. Not civilian settlements based on dubious political land grabs or even religious grounds.
In any event, when Israel forcibly evacuated its citizens from the Sinai in 1978 and demolished their homes when the area was returned to Egypt pursuant to the Camp David Accords, I thought their politicians had seen the light, and things would get better.
Of course, under Jimmy Carter, the US was then willing to use its political clout to force such an outcome.
Sadly, that policy was reversed in the 1980s, driven in part by the influx of Russian Jews, when the settlement restarted with a vengeance, and the rise of the zionist neocons in the US.
Last year, Israel announced they would build 300 new settlements near Bethlehem, and earlier this year, they said they would expand the West Bank settlements.
Even Condoleezza Rice (hardly an anti-Israel advocate) stated that such expansion should stop and was inconsistent with Israel’s obligations.
I’m afraid Israel is no more "defending" itself against the rightful resistance of the Palestinian people to this invasion/colonization than we are "defending" ourselves by being in Iraq, or the Russians were "defending" themselves in Afghanistan.
Israel is an invader; I do not know of any international resolution or likes that do not regard the settlements as an illegal land grab. The Palestinians have the right to resist this invasion by any means they can, and if the world was a better place, the UN would send a military force to forcibly remove all the Israeli settlements and return the Israel army to within its 1967 borders, while enforcing peace militarily if need be, on the Palestinian side as well.
The reason this won’t happen is that Israel and the U.S. block such a move; therefore Israel and the U.S. as accessory are entirely at fault in this matter.
As Glenn Greenwald accurately states, this type of argument can be heard in Israel, but not in the U.S., despite the fact that 71% of Americans want a more even-handed treatment of the parties.
SGEW
Yep. Nothing like a resurgence of Palestinian/Israeli violence to make people’s collective IQ drop by about forty points.
I swear: otherwise reasonable people simply lose their minds over this. "Crush the savage animals!" say the die-hard pro-Israel fanatics. "Jews are as bad as Nazis!" say the die-hard anti-Israel fanatics. And around and around we go.
If you want to get a better understanding of why the peace process can never get off the ground, just lurk through all the comment threads on this issue. Two sides that just assume their rhetorical opponents are monstrously, hideously wrong. It makes the ’08 election look like a mild disagreement over municipal zoning laws.
My father, who has watched the intractable situation with growing sadness for fifty years, has given up seeing peace in Israel and Palestine in his lifetime. I have yet to reach that sense of hopelessness (my father didn’t expect the Berlin wall to fall either), but it’s getting harder and harder.
[Oh, and by the way: Brick Oven Bill is a sociopath who should not be engaged with. Otherwise, carry on.]
Duke of Earl
I/P is rather obviously like a bad marriage in some ways, extremists on either side know exactly where the buttons are on the other side and exactly how to push those buttons. Getting the extremists to stop pushing buttons is not likely to happen, that’s what extremists *do*.
No one has yet mentioned the demographic problem for Israeli society. The Arab Israelis are multiplying far more rapidly than are Jewish Israelis and it’s only a matter of time until the Arabs are a majority in Israel unless something truly dramatic in a demographic sense happens in the meantime.
The upshot of this is that Jewish Israelis really should be looking for some way to bring this conflict to a close (or at least to wind it down as much as possible). Sooner or later, assuming the rhetoric about Israel being a democracy is true, the Jews will become a voting minority within the nation established to give them a refuge. If and when that happens it would be to the advantage of the Jewish Israelis if they had made peace with those who will become the largest voting bloc in Israel.
Frankly if I were a Jewish Israeli I’d be falling all over myself to educate and raise the living standards of my non-Jewish countrymen, it’s the only true cure for the inflated birth rate among the non-Jews in Israel.
Comrade Stuck
Do you really think Hamas would stop attacking Israel only if it vacated it’s settlements and withdrew completely from all Arab land it occupies? Not hardly. That’s not to say Israel hasn’t done and is still doing things against it’s interest of having a real peace. IE the settlements and various ill conceived incursions into Lebanon and Gaza and the WB. Like I said, it’s counterproductive internal Israeli politics. But all the wars launched against Israel in the past by Arab states and terror groups like Hamas and Hezbellah have nothing to do with settlements. They view Israel Proper itself an illegal settlement and are hell bent on dismantling it and driving it’s occupants into the sea, period. Even the Arab countries that have made peace with Israel would still welcome Israel’s ultimate destruction. That’s what they are faced with every day and without that threat would be happy as clams to not attack or invade anybody. They are not the "invaders" but do do stupid things out of existential fear from it’s neighbor’s wanting to annihilate it, completely.
Josh Hueco
@demimondian:
White Makes Right.
Fixt.
4tehlulz
>>How many Israelis did those rockets kill or wound, anyway?
lol. Israel should just let Hamas fire missiles until they kill a couple of hundred people.
Fuck off.
Bob In Pacifica
There is something about taking something from someone else because Gods says so that doesn’t ever end well.
Alex Higgins
Exactly.
John, you might not know much about the Middle East – but you have grasped the bit that really matters well enough.
SGEW
This article always proves relevant whenever the ME situation heats up again:
"The first-ever viable solution to the ongoing crisis."
Nick
"I can not figure out why anyone thinks bombing the living shit out of the Palestinians is going to lead towards peace. "
What makes you think the Israeli right wing wants peace?
That’s a false assumption and you need to get rid of it.
Geoffrey
Turn it all into a sheet of glass.
That way the nutty fundamentalists of all religious stripes (Christian, Jewish, and Islamic) would all lose their holy land BS talking points and the rest of us will be able to live in peace.
p.a.
Correct. Before the first Intifada the Israeli gvt. was subsidizing Hamas and deporting Palestinian moderates as a way to radicalize and discredit the movement for Palestinian autonomy. So things have gotten out of hand; they are now reaping what they have sown.
Lavocat
It will be "solved" by perennial death.
Seriously, only when America is removed from the equation is there any real chance for peace in this region.
Until then, Happy Death!
Marshall
The Middle East mess is like a disastrously failed marriage. If you go to see either spouse, they will start telling you chapter and verse about the evil, nasty things the other did, how they had put up with all they could, how they had to strike back, etc., etc. After endless rounds of retaliation and strike/counter strike it all just runs together. (Saying this will infuriate the parties involved, but if you have ever known married people who came to hate each other, you will know what I mean.)
The only way out (IMHO) is to ignore the litanies of evils perpetuated on each one by the other, and (try and) force them to do the right thing. Do not expect any gratitude for doing this, but it is the only way the Middle East has ever seen progress.
Punchy
I think the Jews should go back to making money and the ‘Stinians back to making bombs. Also, Redheads are fiery, blacks like rap music, and women cant drive.
Good day.
4tehlulz
@Punchy: You forgot about Poland! Poland is filled with dummies.
Punchy
I, personally, like Hamas. Chick peas are delicious, and with crackers and bread…..ummmm……
rachel
@4tehlulz: LOL. You have no idea, do you? You have no frickin’ clue whether this response was in proportion to the provocation or not, and you don’t care. I wonder why not; perhaps the thought of all those dead and wounded Palestians gives you a hard-on.
4tehlulz
@rachel: ZOMG YOU CRITICIZED ME YOU MUST BE AIPAC
lol no. Here’s a tip, Israel acting like total fucks does not excuse Hamas firing rockets into Israel
You seem pretty excited about dead Palestinians, though. Does the RAAAAGE make you happy? Keep it up though. In the future you may be able to convince someone you actually care.
demimondian
@AhabTRuler: I suggest that Gaza under Hamas meets all the standards of a sovereign nation, up to and including the maintenance of a standing armed force for the protection of its territorial integrity. It’s not a traditional uniformed force, but the effectiveness of partisan forces in Gaza is displayed by Israel’s unwillingness to become engaged in ground warfare, despite its technological advantage.
Gaza under Hamas is much more like a nation under siege than it is a truly occupied territory or a colonial outpost. The West Bank, by contrast, is clearly still an occupied territory, colonized by the settlements and maintained in subjugation by foreign troops.
rachel
@4tehlulz: Find me a number–links or it didn’t happen–and maybe I’ll believe you care about the Israelis. Otherwise you can go back to whacking of to Top Ten Fighters, or whatever.
4tehlulz
@rachel: What are you? Some refugee from 4chan? Number of what? Rockets?
rachel
@4tehlulz: What is the number of Israelis that have been killed and wounded by Hamas rockets in, say, the last year?
4tehlulz
@rachel: How is that even relevent? If those Israeli bombs didn’t kill anyone, does that make their actions less appalling?
By your logic, it does.
SLKRR
@Cain:
Are Palestinians Arabs? If you go by the commonly accepted definition that Arabs include people who speak Arabic as a first language, then yes. But there are a lot of ethnic differences between Yemenis, Palestinians, Iraqis, Egyptians, Lebanese, etc.
And that, of course, doesn’t include Iranians at all, who besides being of different ethnicity, speak Persian. And I agree that Persians are some of the most beautiful people on the planet, though I may have some bias, being married to one and all.
Cyrus
@DrDave:
Why is that? I mean, why does the recognition have to come first? Why not as part of the final settlement, or as a halfway step between the two-state solution and a cease-fire with some boilerplate agreements on the most basic common ground? What you’re asking for here is just negotiations where you set as a precondition that one side concede the other side’s main priority without getting anything in return. It’s stupid when the U.S. government insists that Iran prove it has dismantled its nuclear program before we’ll even talk to them, and it’s stupid between Israel and Palestine too.
This also seems to apply to @Michael D.‘s overly simplistic questions. If Israel laid down its weapons AND did something about the settlements, the answers to his questions might be different. OTOH, if not, then Michael D.’s answers are probably right but the questions are meaningless, because they leave out one of the big bones of contention. And speaking of meaningless:
If they are responding disproportionately, then they aren’t in the right. I think it follows from the meaning of the word "disproportionately." Call this comment just pedantry if you want, but your comment, just laying blame, identifying a villain, doesn’t actually help either.
Comrade Stuck
@SLKRR:
Palestinians and other Arabs are all Semite, coming from same or similar language and cultural roots. Something to do with ancestors of one of Noah’s spawn, or something.
4tehlulz
>>I mean, why does the recognition have to come first?
Because this will remove an excuse for Israel not to negotiate.
SLKRR
@Comrade Stuck:
That is true, but being "all Semite" doesn’t mean that much in this context. Most of Europe, the Americas, and a good chunk of South Asia are "all Indo-European" but that doesn’t mean there aren’t significant ethnic differences between Italians, Norwegians, Persians, and Pakistanis. Likewise, just calling everyone from Morocco to Oman "Arabs" or "Semitic" doesn’t eliminate the ethnic differences.
Lupin
@ Comrade Stuck
Re: #160
Israel is an invader because it has grabbed land that didn’t belong to it (in response to military aggression, certainly), has kept it and has used it to resettle it with its own civilian population, as opposed to only military bases.
If, for example, America after WWII had expropriated Germans and Japanese farmers and settled large tracts of these two countries with its own farmers from the Midwest, without compensation, and against the will of the local authorities, it would be an invasion.
What America did is negotiate the creation of permanent military bases in these countries. A vastly different proposal.
Israel has since made its civilian land grab policy official. Hamas is nothing more than one manifestation of legitimate resistance to an Israeli invasion. I deplore their methods, but then resistance against an invader of overwhelming superiority is never pretty.
AhabTRuler
@demimondian: sorry demi, but there is no such thing as de facto sovereignty, only de jure.
Cain
@Brick Oven Bill:
Bill’s got that peaceful easy feeling.
cain
jj
It seems to me that apart from low level conflict in perpetuity, there is no endgame here for Israel or Palestinians and unless this bloody stalemate can be brought to a reasonable conclusion, that light at the end of the tunnel is elimination of one or both parties to the conflict.
The demographics are such that Israel needs to accept the reality that it is not going to be able to remain a solely Jewish state going forward and start integrating as many Palestinians into Israeli society as it can, as soon as possible.
The other option is to keep getting sucked into these kinds of counterproductive spats until the Palestinian extremists get ahold of something very nasty (this is inevitable on a long enough timetable) and watch the survivors attempt enact a final solution to the Palestinian problem.
Personally, I prefer the option with a smaller body count.
I’m not so sure about the Israelis and Palestinians though.
demimondian
@AhabTRuler: Huh? Seeing as how there is no higher authority to whom one can appeal, de jure sovereignty is a complete fiction; de facto sovereignty is the only kind there is. If your organization can maintain physical security against most actual invaders most of the time, then it is a national government — cf. Iraq in 2003 — if it cannot, it is not.
4tehlulz
@demimondian: Then how is the Hamas-led government de facto sovereignty? Israel can, and does, invades and attacks it with impunity.
Cain
@SGEW:
I disagree, I think most people acknowledge that the fault lies in both sides for a variety of reasons. The reason problems still exist is that neither side really wants peace badly enough. For all I know, Israel loves them their weapons and Hamas loves to beat on Israel cuz death is fun and they ran out of checkerboards.
You can write off the current generation as it’s built on hate. What you need to do instead is to work on the next generation and get them to start working towards peace. It’s not going to happen anytime soon.
That said, one way to sway Palestinians is to improve the economy in the West Bank and Gaza. Make them have more to lose, once Palestinians are successful and are making decent wages it’ll be much harder for Hamas to upset the apple cart. Of course talk is easy, but money going into weapons for Israel could be used to invest in third party palestinian businesses with strict controls that it’s not being used to launder money for weapons.
cain
Cain
@Geoffrey:
Convert the U.S. to the Hari Krishna cult. Unfortunately, we’d probably run out of flowers or something.
cain
Comrade Stuck
You should have stopped there. Israel has the right under international laws of war to keep what it conquers in a war of aggression against it. Just like the US in WW2. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for a supposed peaceful democracy to do it. I’m not defending the settlements as they are clearly contrary to Israel’s stated goal of peace and is, as I said several times this thread, a product of Israeli internal politics. It is also accurate to describe Israel as an occupier of those lands it took in 1967, but not to call them the invaders, because they are not. They have been, and remain under perpetual existential threat from their neighbors and have the right of self defense like any nation when attacked. And when they are attacked and then counter attack, there is no requirement to use only "proportionate force". They really should and I wish they would, but they can, by law , use whatever force they think is necessary to destroy their attackers.
Cain
@SLKRR:
Which is why Persians hate being referred to as "Arabs". :-) It’s like calling a Scotsman, Britsh. Boy do they hate that. I would think Palestinians feel the same. They must have some mixed blood with the persians.
BTW Indians with white blood in their family past are also hot. Sometimes they have blue or green eyes.
cain
AhabTRuler
@demimondian: Wow. You’re right. No such thing as international law. Palestinians have themselves a sovereign state. Amazing the clarity you bring to the subject. Please see comment #35.
wilfred the shoe thrower
Well it’s certainly the end of any more wanking about a two-state solution, a pathetic fantasy kept alive by liberal Jews too timid to jack off in public at the sight of more dead Palestinians.
It’s also a final love letter to snuff film lovers like Bush, Lieberman et al. who were already pouting at the possibility of Obama the sand-nigger lover not offering up his anus to Aipac determinism and the never ending exigencies of the ‘Jewish State’.
Have another mallomar and beer, John, post some cat px and don’t trouble yourself with such sad things.
demimondian
@4tehlulz: With impunity? Hardly. In fact, Israel is deathly afraid of invading Gaza, realizing the likelihood of being drawn into another occupation.
Nationhood is not defined by the ability to avoid invasion, but rather by the ability to cohere in the face of invasion, and drive the invader back out. Lebanon remains a nation despite its gross military inferiority to Syria, as is demonstrated by the fact that Syria was driven back out. Similarly, Gaza remains a nation, because Israel was driven back out.
(Oh, and, yes, Iraq remains a nation, because it will have driven us out, too.)
demimondian
@AhabTRuler: Tell me again exactly who is going to punish who over any of the war crimes in the current imbroglio? I’m having some trouble here…
ThymeZoneThePlumber
Ideas are good to the extent that they are in alignment with what the goals are.
What are the true goals of the participants in this conflict?
Short term, mid term, long term?
Comrade Stuck
Simplified, Hamas and friends want to destroy Israel and take back the land they believe is their’s and Israel just wants to be left alone. Though there are groups on either side who have their own agenda that often contradicts what the majority, or the one with the most guns wants.
mapaghimagsik
interesting article on Israel’s Right to Exist.
I wonder if there’s a point we can recognize Israel’s right to a homeland *and* see how it was put together was wrong.
AhabTRuler
@demimondian: Demi, I normally credit your "persona" with being less of an amoral shit, but I think Josh Hueco pinned you down at comment #161.
4tehlulz
Well, this is your area of expertise Wilfred.
Comrade Stuck
@SLKRR:
Didn’t say it did. It just means that people claiming Palestians are ant-Semites misses the mark.
demimondian
@AhabTRuler: I’m not an amoral piece of shit. Nation-states, however, are. Israel has a right to exist. Why? Because the UN said it should? No. Because in 1956, when Israel’s neighbors tried to wipe her off the map, they got a huge shock, and have continued to get such shocks. For better or for worse, the people who form the nation of Israel can successfully maintain their own borders — and, as a result, Israel is a nation.
Hamas has also successfully turned Gaza into a nation-state. That’s an amazing achievement, given the situation, but the actual recognition is not a moral judgment, merely a statement of fact.
Worrying about blame and such is counterproductive when a war is happening. Wars are, by definition, evil and immoral — there’s no such thing as a good war. If you’re really interested in ending one, then, you need to stick to the facts about the parties involved — what are their goals, short term, medium term, and long term, as TZ says above — and not worry about justifying anything.
War is always evil, so taking the step to start it is always evil. It may be the least of all evils, but that doesn’t make it right, and pretending otherwise is worse than self-deception.
Lupin
@ Comrade
Re 194.
You did not answer my point at all. Military security is one thing. Exporting your farmers to take over land previously farmed by others is an invasion pure and simple.
SLKRR
@Comrade Stuck:
Re: 205
OK – I get it now.
RS
Hamas (or Hezbullah) represent as much an existential threat to Israel as did the IRA to Great Britain or the militia movement to the US (as a resident of the part of Michigan where Tim McVeigh perfected his bomb-making skills, I’m particularly grateful the government didn’t respond with a demonstration of it’s air superiority). Pretending they do is either a rhetorical device or an indication of the ignorance of whoever it is making the argument.
The Arab League has twice during the Bush presidency
proposed a peace initiative that explicitly recognizes Israel’s right to nationhood. It’s been dismissed by Israel and the US, partly on the grounds that it would it would guarantee the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
If Israelis or their apologists are uncomfortable with comparisons to the European fascists of the early 20th century, emulating their tactics isn’t particularly helpful.
TheHatOnMyCat
Heh.
p.a.
I see no light at the end of the tunnel, but then in 1815 no one would have predicted England and France wouldn’t be at each others’ throats in perpetuity, and the same with France and Germany in 1945. Very different situations I know, both lacking the overlay of religious hatred we have in the ME, but these Europeans had been whacking each other for centuries, not just 60 years. Of course, it took, what? 60 million dead for those feuds to run their course? ugh.
demimondian
@TheHatOnMyCat: /me bows politely.
TenguPhule
You have McCain representing your state.
Enough said.
mapaghimagsik
@RS:
See, that’s where it gets funny. First they say "Well, they won’t recognize our right to nationhood"
Then its, "They won’t recognize our right to nationhood and give up a right to return"
Then its "They won’t recognize our right to nationhood, give up their right of return and be willing to be broken up into cantons of our design."
And isn’t having McCain as your senator the equivalent of a painful heat rash?
demimondian
@p.a.: I see no light at the end of the tunnel, either, but I’m optimist enough to believe that one could exist.
I don’t see the West Bank settlements as an existential issue, except for Kiryat Shmona — it’s not going anywhere, and we might as well all accept that fact. The outposts, though? Yeah, I know a lot of secular Israelis who’d be happy to take their residents out for themselves. Is there something Israel can trade to K.S.? I imagine so; this is the part of the world which created the trader, after all; there are plenty of creative deal-makers on all sides.
Honestly, though, the reason I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel is that there’s only one legitimate government among the Palestinian territories, and it *ain’t* based in the West Bank. I don’t see how Hamas sees its way to a formal negotiating posture in which Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is a legitimate end-point, since that rules out a Palestinian right of return and completely undermines Hamas’ stated ideology.
Svensker
There are lots of different ideas about who is to blame and what each side should do.
Personally, however, as an American, I’m sick and tired of paying for it. I don’t want to give Israel $3B or $5B, or however much it is, aid a year. I don’t want to sell or give them weapons. And I don’t want to pay off the Arab sides — Egypt and Jordan — so they keep their peace treaties.
I want money for health care and my kid’s college, and maybe some for the repairs on the bridge down the street in my NJ neighborhood. I am sick of spending money on the Middle East and getting in the middle of a fight that isn’t mine. For their sakes I very much hope they can stop fighting and achieve peace. Otherwise, get their fucking hands out of my fucking pockets.
TenguPhule
Corrected.
Face
That’s no bias. They’re freakin gorgeous. Their phones are all bugged and their circle of friends are all infiltrated with FBI informants, but they’re still just stunningly beautiful.
SLKRR
@Face:
So that explains why the "Persian grapevine" is so efficient at passing along information. We had relatives on the other side of the planet that knew we were having a baby almost before we did. ;-)
gil mann
Like the old saying goes, "The definition of ‘the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’ is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."
We’re so used to complicated situations being oversimplified for US consumption, but I wonder if that mess over there is even easier to understand than we give it credit for. I honestly think "those assholes!" is about the most sophisticated analysis you can make at this point.
Apparently western-style democracies just can’t NOT play right into their foes’ hands. Here’s a hint, kids–when someone’s trying to provoke you, maybe responding by getting provoked as all hell isn’t the smartest game plan.
Comrade Stuck
@Lupin:
Yes I did, Occupation is not the same thing as invasion. geesh.
bernarda
Comrade Stuck 154, "The cold fact is that Israel was attacked by a number of Arab countries in 1967"
It doesn’t surprise me that Israel groupies have no knowledge of history. It was Israel that attacked Egypt in 1967. Israel did it because it wanted another land grab.
Comrade Stuck
@bernarda:
And it doesn’t surprise me that Israel hating left wing Hamas groupies don’t know that Israel launched a pre-emptive air strike against against the air forces of several Arab countries who were building up forces on their borders to invade and destroy Israel.
Even Chris Hitchens thinks so.
Duke of Earl
@gil mann:
It depends on the objective of the provokee.. There are lots of reasons that a politician would wish to respond in an aggressive manner to a provocation even if it were objectively the worst strategy for his nation as a whole to follow.
An insecure nation such as Israel (and the US come to think of it) is an authoritarian’s wet dream. The political right in the US is strongly authoritarian, I’d be close-to-shocked to find out that the right in Israel was any different.
To paraphrase Deep Throat "follow the power", you will find that what the various actors in the irrationality in the ME are doing brings power, influence and money to certain people who would lack it if a more rational approach were to be followed.
bernarda
Comrade Stuck, "Even Chris Hitchens thinks so."
Oh, I am so impressed.
Egypt had a large number of troops in Yemen at the time. Hardly the time to launch a new war.
But anyway, you admit that you were wrong about Arab nations attacking Israel. BTW, it wasn’t the first time Israel attacked Egypt.
4tehlulz
>>Egypt had a large number of troops in Yemen at the time. Hardly the time to launch a new war.
So true. No one would ever attack a country while tied up in another.
Aristides
The reason you (or anyone else for that matter) can’t think of anything to say is, what else is left to say about people who are fundamentally in conflict with each other and can’t be persuaded to do what’s in their own godamned long-term interests?
I’m hardly an isolationist, nor am I of the "let those people kill each other" school of foreign policy, but one honestly has start wondering whether we have ever had the power to stop this conflict. I’m beginning to suspect that Edward Luttwak is right: the Middle East is a cesspool and for the sake of our own nation we ought to have less to do with it.
TenguPhule
Alas alternative energy….
Comrade Stuck
@bernarda:
wrong, Arab troops were massing along Israel’s border as well.
Au Contraire, I admitted no such thing. A legitimate pre emptive attack is allowed under UN and International Laws of War. But I do admit that you’re an idiot that doesn’t know, or accept basic history.
Duke of Earl
@Aristides:
Umm… Have you looked around the US lately?
There are a hell of a lot of people here who consistently vote against their own long-term interests.
Not to mention that theists and non-theists often have wildly different definitions of or ideas about long term interests.
If I were a Palestinian teenager with no money and hence no prospects for a wife and hence no prospects for sex 72 always-ready virgins would start to sound pretty good.
And I’m also driven to say that both sides know the other side far better than we know either side, who’s to know whether or not their perceptions of each other are more correct than our own?
Publicola
@Comrade Stuck:
That is of course the standard Israeli narrative with respect to the origins of the 6-Day War, and it is the narrative that most Israelis have been taught and believe. Israeli journalist and historian Tom Segev however paints a considerably different picture in his recent book "1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East". "1967" provides a compelling case that Israel’s fear of being destroyed by the then-military alliance between Egypt, Syria, and Jordan was way overblown and at odds with reality, arguing that said fear was based far more on memories of the Holocaust that the actual reality on the ground. With respect to said actual reality, Segev maintains that Israel’s military was so much more powerful than the combined Arab armies that Israel was not in existential danger. Interesting book; recommended.
Perhaps he does, but the quote you cited does not support your assertion. Here’s Hitchens’ quote in larger context:
In this larger context we see that Hitchens was providing the Israel’s justification for their pre-emptive strike and also Egypt’s rebuttal to Israel’s justification while personally endorsing neither position.
Comrade Stuck
@Publicola:
Oh come on. You can argue all day about slow motion counterattacks were to blame, but the facts in May and June and Nassar himself was ranting stupidly about what they were planning to do. You must have glossed over that quote and others at the time. Troops WERE massing on Israel’s borders and Egypt closed down the UN Peacekeeping stations in the Sinai. They couldn’t have been more clear about their intentions. And what was superior for Israel at that time, and unknown to most, was just how skilled and improved Israel’s Air Force had become.
It is not just the standard narrative of Israel on what happened in 1967, it is now the general consensus among most military historians. though there will always be those who want to re write history and blame Israel, even some Israeli’s, so have at it.
This is what wiki says about events.
That One - Cain
Can someone tell me why the right of return is being rejected by Israel? Seems to me they should just invite the palestinians in and just create one big state for everyone. It’s hard to bomb an area if both Palestinians and Jews are living in the same area…
I know I’m being naive but I think forcing them together could work…
cain
rachel
@4tehlulz: And by your logic, I would be justified in hunting some wasps that tried to sting me, with an elephant gun.
But here’s the thing: Hamas had not committed any suicide bombings in Israel since 2005. For 2006, 2007 and 2008, three years, there were no Hamas suicide bombs in Israel. You can bet your bottom dollar that’s going to change, and–unlike those unaimable rockets–suicide bombers can chose exactly where they can go off to cause the worst carnage. They are not limited to only the area that borders Gaza, either. This "Bomb Gaza? Fuck yeah!" idiocy, is going to get more Israelis killed.
Comrade Stuck
Well now, that’s great logic, if you won’t let us kill you with unaimable rockets, then we’ll just have to start back with the suicide bombs. But there’s a wall now which will make it harder, and Israel has gotten much better at catching these killers before they strike..
But it’s looking like the Israeli’s have caught your drift, and are talking about a ground offensive "to change the equation" . Don’t know what that means exactly, but it sounds like an all out ground war to purge Hamas once and for all.
Aristides
That point only supports the idea that we should have nothing to do with the conflict.
Aristides
And redeem themselves for the summer war of 2006, though frankly the odds are at this point that they are more likely to emulate it.
4tehlulz
>>And by your logic,
What logic? The one where I think the Israelis are doing the right thin…OH WAIT I NEVER SAID THAT
>>But here’s the thing: Hamas had not committed any suicide bombings in Israel since 2005. For 2006, 2007 and 2008, three years, there were no Hamas suicide bombs in Israel.
Am I supposed to be impressed by this? I imagine it’s just a coincidence that rocket attacks from Gaza skyrocketed after 2005.
Comrade Stuck
@Aristides:
I agree that they won’t be able to purge Hamas, as only the Palestinians themselves can do that. And it will succeed in getting a lot of people killed, including Israeli troops and creating a new generation of Hamas recruits. I don’t see any upside to such an action other than to release pent up frustration, though there’s always the slim possibility that the bloodletting will be so extreme, both sides will say enough. Probably not though.
TenguPhule
Because the land being claimed is Israel and already has people who spent many years developing it and living on it.
Not gunna happen.
TenguPhule
So Israel gets a whitewash for everything before 2005 too, or is this IOIYH?
Publicola
@Comrade Stuck:
In May 1967 Egypt’s President Nasser massed the majority of his troops in the Sinai, true. The primary question here is: was Nasser’s troop deployment offensive or defensive? The answer to that question is far from clear – it may well be that Nasser himself wasn’t even clear on his intentions there.
How could Nasser troop build-up in the Sinai have been a defensive move, you may ask? As is the case with pretty much everything in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, that troop build-up didn’t happen in a vacuum, and context is everything. Here’s some relevant context:
1: In October 1956 Israel, in a secret alliance with Britain and France, attacked Egypt and had achieved their primary objective of taking the Suez Canal from Egypt. (from the beginning of modern Israel’s existence Egypt had refused Israel access to the Suez, and in 1956 had moreover nationalized the canal, which the British and French had had corporate and strategic national interests in). The invasion was a military success but a political disaster that had worldwide repercussions; this lead to the US forcing a cease-fire and the removal of all troops from the Suez except new UN peacekeepers. Which is to say, Egypt then lost control of the Suez.
2: In 1966-67 Israeli border clashes were heating up on two fronts: Jordan and Syria. With respect to Jordan, Israel responded to a nascent PLO’s terrorists strikes with military strikes in Jordan, most notably when Israel attacked the civilian town of Samu in the (the Jordan-controlled) West Bank. In Syria border skirmishes with intentional provocation by both sides had been going on in the Golan Heights region for years over water and land disputes, the largest clash being an aerial battle over the Golan wherein the Syrians lost six fighter aircraft. (Some historians regard that incident to be the first shots of the 1967 War, and/or the event that led to the war.)
3: In the Spring of 1967 the Soviet Union (erroneously) informed the Syrians that Israel was planning to invade Syria; Syrian in turn informed their military ally Egypt.
With this backdrop — a recent history of Israeli attacking and invading Egypt, an increased in hostilities between Israel and Egypt’s allies Jordan and Syria, and Soviet intel stating that Israel was going to attack Syria — it’s now easy to see how Egypt’s troop massing may have primarily been a defensive maneuver, intended to intimidate Israel so the would not attack Egypt’s military ally Syria.
Politically, with Egypt’s allies being attacked and threatened there was also Nasser’s need to act like he was doing something – doing nothing in those circumstances could have resulted loss of prestige and power as the leader of not just Egypt but as the then-leader of Arab nationalism. With that in mind Egypt’s taking back control of the Suez — which again they had lost control of after Israel’s 1956 invasion and — played well for the folks back home.
Which brings us to Nasser’s bellicose statements re- destroying Israel: In insecure times acting tough generally plays well for the folks back home – if only that weren’t the case. Which isn’t to say that Israel shouldn’t have taken those threats seriously – but they nonetheless may have been far more bark than intended bite, intended primarily for the home audience.
That Israel’s military might was far superior to the Arabs’ — and in this scenario that mostly meant Egypt’s — was plain for objective observers to see. For example here’s New York Times journalist James Reston on the eve of the Six-Day War:
(The above quote is from wiki.)
I assume you are aware of Israel’s so-called "new historians" – the current generation of respected (except by some on the Israeli-right) Israeli historians who, using relatively recently declassified Israeli government documents and other new sources of information, are challenging and quite often convincingly debunking traditional Israeli assumptions and propaganda about Israeli history. (See for example "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem" by Benny Morris – that book blew the lid off of the traditional Israeli myth that all or most of the Palestinians willingly left their homes during Israel’s War for Independence; his findings are now accepted as truth and are taught in Israeli schools.) Two of the most prominent of these "new historians" are Segev and Morris; I have read several of their books in addition to "1967" and I can say with absolute confidence that their agenda is not to "blame Israel" to instead set the historical record straight.
Finally, it isn’t just some of Israel’s "new historians" who argue that Nasser did not intend to invade in 1967 – there were many in the Israeli government at the time who held that position as well. For example, here’s then-Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban:
Comrade Stuck
@Comrade Stuck:
I’ll repeat the Nassar quote from my previous comment.
your right, context is important, and the context at the time was Israel being surrounded by two hundred million Arabs and their governments that wanted to destroy it, and Israel just wanting to be left alone. It’s still basically the same way, though some governments have given up on defeating Israel with military power, unless they sense sufficient weakness.
And this is about the silliest remark so far on the 67 war. I’m not going to start re writing what I’ve written so far this thread. You can believe what you want and use "new" historians opinions to essentially rewrite whatever history they want. it’s time to bring out the Garlic and wooden stakes for this thread IMO
Glenn
Ham-ass or I call them Pork butt should get a better strategy if they want to beat Israel. Telling your enemy you want him and his whole family and pets dead doesn’t encourage surrender.
Publicola
@Comrade Stuck:
And I’d repeat what I wrote to you in response, except that going in circles repeating what has already been said without adding new information is a pointless waste of time.
Don’t misunderstand me here – I fully understand how and why Israelis took that 1967 threat seriously. There’s plenty of blame to go around on both sides there.
I’ll believe Israel as a country is finally serious about a real post 6-Day War peace process when they finally stop their relenltess settlement expansion in the West Bank.
You did catch where I wrote that what you just characterized as the "silliest remark so far on the 67 war" was not from one of Israel’s "new historians" but was instead from then-Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban – didn’t you?
And you are aware of who Abba Eban was, right?
Comrade Stuck
He was one of the most Dovish of all Israeli leaders at the time. And if he said that, then he was wrong and silly. Again bottom line.
100,000 troops massed on Israel’s border
1000 tanks
Nassar removes UNEF Peacekeepers,( which is widely accepted as conclusive evidence to what Nassar’s true intentions were). Attack Israel.
Closing the canal for Israeli ships
Nassar’s own statement of intent, albeit later corrected to Nah, I didn’t mean it.
And the actual ground war was started by Jordan after Israel’s Air Strikes. History has long since collectively agreed it was a valid pre emptive air strike (not Invasion) by Israel.
No there’s not. Unless you believe that Israel stole Palestinian land to form a State and has no right to exist there. Do You?
Comrade Stuck
@Comrade Stuck:
I wan’t to clarify this remark Publicola. I was talking about the overall strategic root cause for the problems in the ME being a basic rejection by the Palestinian’s, Arab countries and others, for the UN mandate to create Israel and it’s right to exist where it is. Concerning tactics, many have been wrong, unnecessary, and in some cases war crimes. I agree that there is enough blame to go around at this level. And some of Israel’s actions have bordered on evil. Such as the massacre of Palestinian refugees by Christian Lebanese Militias in the early 80’s that Sharon either sanctioned or turned a blind eye to. I don’t defend many of Israel’s tactics any more than I do with suicide bombings by Hamas, but believe the root cause of the modern conflict is Arab belligerence against Israel’s right of existence in Palestine.
rachel
href="#comment-1113685">TenguPhule: It’s trading attacks that might kill your people for ones that will kill your people. But the Israeli hawks get re-elected and the Hamas leadership will get more recruits and funds, so this is all good if you happen to be an extremist of one stripe or the other.
If you’re a regular Joe Israeli or Palestinian, not so much.
Publicola
@Comrade Stuck:
No "ifs" about it: Abba Eban, a legendary figure in Isreali politics dating back to its founding era and arguably the greatest foreign diplomat that Israel has ever had, said that he believed Nasser’s assurance that he did not plan to attack and that he did not want war.
No offense intended, Comrade Stuck, but I strongly suspect that Eban was far more informed than you are on what was going on back then. And as such I find your glib dismissal of Eban’s assessment as "the silliest remark so far on the 67 war" as, well, silly.
Moreover Eban was far from alone amongst the giants of the Israeli leaders in holding that assessment. No less than David Ben-Gurion – Israel’s first Prime Minister and Israel’s rough equivalent to our George Washington – also opposed that pre-emptive strike against Egypt on the same belief that Nasser did not intend to invade. For that matter even Israel’s Prime Minister at the time, Levi Eshkol, remained undecided on the issue until just 3 days before the attack, the hawks amongst his advisers having finally won him over.
Then there’s an assessment by Israel’s then Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, who was hawkish on the war at the time but a decade later came around to asserting that, with respect to Syria, war was not necessary and Israel was the aggressor:
Then there were external assessments: I already quoted the New York Times’ James Reston report on the eve of the war that "Cairo does not want war and it is certainly not ready for war." Here’s another quote from Reston from the previous month (May 1967):
For that matter, the United States also counseled restraint to the Israelis, and for the same reason – they too did not believe Egypt would attack.
I already addressed Egypt’s troop build-up in the Sinai in a previous post in this thread.
How, in your mind, does Nasser’s removal UN Peacekeepers and retaking control of the Suez Canal constitute "conclusive" evidence that Nasser intended to invade Israel? .
They were closed when Egypt previously controlled the Suez too – nothing new under the sun there.
Nasser’s belligerent public statements were contradicted by his private assurances that he would not attack.
Even if that’s correct, that in your mind has what significance, exactly?
Debatable, but even if true here’s the thing about "history": with respect to such relatively recent events such the 1967 6-Day war: new information (for historians) is still being declassified by the Israeli government and otherwise still coming to light that can and often does alter the big-picture historical consensus. For example, the fact that, per then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, the border conflicts with Syria in the Golan Heights before the war where primarily due to active provocation by Israelis only came to light about a decade ago. The revised assessment of the Golan conflict based on this new information was summarized by the Washington Post thusly:
Your assertion here makes about as much sense as saying that those who assert that the US bear a significant part of the blame for the Iraq War must believe that the US has no right to exist. Deny all you want to, but Israel did plenty of things to help bring on the 6-Day War, Israel’s intentional provocation of the Syrians being one of many examples.
LOL – do you ask people who oppose some American policies if they are anti-American too?
In any event the answer to your question is this: Hell no – I am pro-Israel and I believe she has as much of a right to exist as any other country. For what it’s worth my general political positions re- Israel is reflected in Israel’s Peace Now organization; I’m a long-time member of her American sister organization, Americans for Peace Now.
And that said, although I am pro-Israel as I am an American citizen I put America’s interests first – and with respect to Israel that means I support the freezing of all Israeli aid until Israel stops settlement expansion in the West Bank – all that does, besides continually undermining any realistic chance for a real peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, is undermine our own national security. Fortunately, what is in the best interests of America here is also in the best interests of Israel as well.
Publicola
@Comrade Stuck:
With my "There’s plenty of blame to go around on both sides" comment above I was specifically addressing blame with respect to the build-up to 1967 war. That said I’ll extend it to the overall conflict – there’s more than enough blame to go around there, too.
Including with respect to the UN’s Partition Plan – have you seen the UN’s map? What a wholly unrealistic joke — the border between the two states was long and contorted and impossible to defend. Also the Jewish state would have included more than half a million Arabs, slightly more than the number of Jews then living within the proposed boundaries.
The Zionist movement accepted the UN partition plan in a wise tactical step, even though they knew it could not realistically be implemented – everyone knew there would be war.
TenguPhule
@rachel
I’m sorry, but those words don’t mean what you seem to think they mean.
Friendless
John, let me pick up on this comment:
"but my understanding of the ongoing crisis is as superficial as most Americans"
Do you find that the reason you’re uninformed is because the media tells you nothing of any use? You’re fed superficial information, it’s no wonder your understanding is superficial. I certainly don’t understand why Israel allowed supplies into the Gaza Strip and started attacking on the same day.
There’s also the rioting in Greece. We’re told people are rioting because 1 5yo boy was shot dead by the police. A 15yo boy was shot dead by police in Melbourne Australia at the same time and nobody rioted. So why riot in Greece? Obviously there’s a reason but it’s not being reported on.
And the constitutional crisis in Thailand. First some people with yellow shirts protested against the government, and the government got sacked. Now the people in red shirts are protesting against the government and it looks just as bad. Isn’t Thailand a democracy? Don’t they have the rule of law? Are they just going to keep changing shirts and deposing the government?
I watch Australia’s best international news program every evening, and they just don’t tell you these things. I guess they don’t know. I switch channels and get the same report on another channel. I guess everybody just reports what AAP or Reuter’s or whoever says, no matter how shallow it is.
I’ve decided I can’t rely on the media to find out what happens in the world – I’m just going to be spoon-fed drivel. My best hope is to read blogs where the reporting is independent, if not slick. And if I really want to know why the indians are fighting the government in the west of Colombia I’m going to have to learn Spanish, because there’s just nobody reporting that story in English.
Comrade Stuck
@Publicola:
No doubt he was a great diplomat, diplomats who generally prefer diplomacy to war. that’s their job. So he didn’t think Egypt was planning to attack, obviously the people higher in Israel’s chain of command at the time disagreed. like say PM Eshkol.
And it is just as obvious that we can never know for sure what Egypt would have done if left alone at that time.
Yea, you said they were just defensive. What bullshit. Try again.
You are aware that the UNEF was in the Sinai to keep the peace between Israel and Egypt, aren’t you? Nassarr sent them packing on May 19, 1967. Why would he do that as he was massing troops and tanks on Israel’s border and raving about how the Arab world wanted war with Israel to destroy it?
Jesus, you are a thick.
It is significant in that Israel didn’t start the ground war. Israel’s pre emption was measured to destroy air power.
If new info comes to light that is accepted by Historians enough to re-write the history of the 6 day war, then get back to me. Until then you are just another Truther trying to get someone to notice your genius.
This comparison is absurd on it’s face. And there is no doubt that Israel while surrounded with angry Arab’s wanting to annihilate them did things they shouldn’t have to provoke. It is likewise just as absurd to deny the big picture of who wanted who destroyed.
And if Israel is just the Big Bad Wolf provoking war and Egypt et al is the victim of aggressor Israel, then why did they try again in 1973 to kill off the Israeli State. Dayan was claiming then that Arab’s weren’t going to attack and his denial almost cost Israel it’s existence. Or was this just another case of delayed counter attack, or Israeli provokation.
And it is a good thing to have peace in the ME, but threatening to freeze funds to Israel until it dismantles all the settlements makes me wonder about your true belief about Israel. Do you think Hamas or Hezbollah or Iran or ANY Arab country for that matter, even those with peace agreements with Israel, will quit doing and dreaming of Israel’s demise? hardly. Israel should take down or trade land for some settlements because no lasting peace can happen until that happens. But they are not the root of the problem for those who don’t accept Israel’s existence and will never quit fighting until it is pushed into the sea. I’m not all that hopeful for any kind of peace any time soon
vivelame
@Comrade Stuck:
You are aware that Israel expelled the UN envoy for Human Rights about two weeks ago, right? While they were getting ready for their bombing campaign for a month or so, according to Ehud Barak. Israel sent Richard Falk packing on December 15, 2008. Why would they do that as they were prepping their planes and target lists, if they did not intent to, you know, commit war crimes and violate human rights?
Comrade Stuck
@vivelame:
I’m not surprised that Israel has been planning a response to continued and increased rocket attacks by Hamas. Rocket attacks that have been going on well before a month ago. Not much of a point there vivelame.
vivelame
@Comrade Stuck: The point is: *why* did they expell the UN envoy for Human Rights, if they were planning on, you know, minimizing civilians casualties? It’s obvious to all that, just like Nasser expelling the UNEF from *egyptian land* Egypt was denied the control of meant that he was about to attack Israel, Israel expelling the UN envoy for HR means they’re planning on a genocide. Right?
Comrade Stuck
@vivelame:
There is no comparison between UNEF in 67 and what you are citing. But I don’t disagree that Israel doesn’t want watchful eyes on what they thinking about doing. It is pretty obvious that this time it’s going to be "all out war" like they’ve stated, and a lot of people are going to get killed in the cramped quarters of Gaza — Hamas, civilians, and Israeli soldiers. I don’t approve of it and hope Israel changes it”s mind about doing it.
bernarda
Comrade Stuck, I see you like to stick to the high ground, "But I do admit that you’re an idiot". I guess you think that confirms your argument. But even if I am an idiot, that doesn’t show that you are right. Several later posters have shown that you are not.
In addition to what Publicola has said, Israeli leaders at the time admitted that they intentionally provoked Syria. They would send out units towards the Syrian border. If the Syrians didn’t fire, they would send them further out.
1967 was a planned land-grab, pure and simple. Until the imposed peace with Egypt, the Israeli imperialists planned to annex Sinai as part of Greater Israel.
At the time that the U.S. pushed the fledgling UN to divide Palestine for no good reason, Jews occupied 6% of the land. The UN wanted to give them 50%. The Zionist plan has always been to ethnically cleanse the area.
Publicola
@Comrade Stuck:
Congratulations on your multitude of gross distortions and outright lies with respect to what I’ve written in your latest post addressed to me, Comrade Stuck – an impressive achievement. Addressing and correcting all of your gross distortions and lies here would be tedious for both me and the reader, as well as too time consuming. As such I’ll just address the lie that you attributed to me in reference to what’s going on in Israel/Palestine today, as opposed what went on historically – in that respect and in the big picture, again in my view there is more than enough blame to go around on both sides (or more accurately, all sides).
Here’s your lie with respect to what I wrote about in reference to what’s going on today:
I threatened no such thing, and if you had read for comprehension what I actually wrote then you too would have understood as much. Here’s what I wrote – try reading it for comprehension this time:
Got that, Comrade Stuck? I said stop settlement expansion, not "dismantle all the settlements." And if you have any clue whatsoever as to what’s going in in the West Bank re- Israeli settlements – and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you do – then you too know that the difference between "stop settlement expansion" and "dismantle all the settlements" is huge, and that your substituting one for the other is a deceptively gross misrepresentation of my position.
Such a gross misrepresentation of what I wrote – and that was only one of many in your previous post – which you in turn then used to try to impugn my integrity with respect to my stated support of Israel, makes me wonder about whether you are so closed-minded with respect to your positions on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that you aren’t even paying attention to what people are actually saying who disagree with you on the issue and instead knee-jerk assume they must be uninformed and/or anti-Israel, and/or you are simply resorting to throwing rhetorical bullshit here at me in the hopes that some of it will stick in the minds of readers who aren’t paying close attention.
Whatever the reasons are for your gross distortions of what I’ve written here, if you opt to continue our exchange here then please respond to what I’ve actually written, as opposed to simply making shit up and attributing it to me – thanks.
Comrade Stuck
@Publicola:
Ok, I stand corrected on the description, which btw changes nothing else in my assertion and is not really "gross distortion" because the real problem is Hamas and it’s kind’s relentless and mindless march to destroy Israel. And I still also assert that you are nothing more than a "Israel Truther" searching for some way to re write established history of the 67 war. If that impugnes your integrity, well then welcome to Balloon Juice. A place where everything at one time or another gets impugned. Quit sniveling and sling some shit back if you like. But quit sniveling.
And btw, I will add the moronic bernarda to this comment. You two deserve one another/ Mutt and Jeff
Publicola
@Comrade Stuck:
If you really think that "dismantle all the settlements" is "not really" a gross distortion of "stop settlement expansion" then you are delusional.
Nice subject change there.
That said I’m no fan of Hamas either, and have no delusions about the fact that their objective is indeed the "relentless search to destroy Israel." Too bad Israel’s actions helped create Hamas, which didn’t exist until the 80s.
And yes, Fatah’s actions helped create Hamas too – yet again, there’s more than enough blame to go around on both sides there.
I love irony. You don’t even understand what my position on the 67 war is – or if you do then you’ve intentionally and repeatedly misrepresented it here.
Again you are evidently too closed-minded to be open to points of view that different that your own – so closed minded that you aren’t even taking the time to actually read and comprehend differing points of view.
Talk about being an "Israel Truther" – yikes.
Comrade Stuck
@Publicola:
You want to stop funding Israel if they don’t quit building settlements. I understand that very well. And I don’t agree and further that stopping the building of settlements will not stop hamas or any other terror group from attacking Israel. It’s a Red Herring in that regard, and MOST certainly is the point. And you want to leave Israel to the wolves over something that is not on the list of things that will placate the annihilationists. A list that contains a single demand that Israel disappear. It is you who are delusional and a chickenshit liar. I have more respect for those who just come out and say they despise the existence of an Israeli state. At least they are honest. Now piss off wanker.
Publicola
@Comrade Stuck:
You finally got that part of where I stand correct, at least.
Do you always think in such binary, black-and-white terms?
Do you also think that, say, if you shower before going to work then Gennifer in marketing will sleep with you? Or are you at least sophisticated enough to understand that while taking a regular shower won’t be the do-or-die action that would get her to sleep with you, it is nonetheless a necessary action for you to undertake if you are really serious about getting her to sleep with you?
(Credit where it’s due: I stole that brilliant analogy from Tim F, who posted it in a related thread, and expanded upon it a bit.)
It’s your simplistic, binary, straw-man rhetoric that is the red herring here.
Damn, and here I thought that maybe you were finally beginning to open your mind up at least enough to maybe begin to understand my position here, but then you went and hurled that rhetorical bullshit.
You do understand that if the United States were to make our "aid" to Israel conditional upon their ending settlement expansion that Israel would do exactly that, don’t you? They would simply have no choice but to comply. Assuming you do understand that fundamental reality, how in your closed mind does that constitute "leaving Israel to the wolves"?
I’m being completely honest and direct here. Too bad you are far too closed minded to understand as much.
Comrade Stuck
@Publicola:
You start out this debate by trying to re-write the history books on something that happened 40 years ago and has been turned inside out ever since, with nearly every reputable historian saying that Israel acted properly within the laws of pre emptive military action. And by using something called "new" historians and one or two out of context quotes of the time.
And then talk in circles about how you support Israel but then go on to wank about how they are always the one to blame. And do it in a weasle way with oblique arguments and claims of open mindedness. Bullshit. Everything you’ve argued on this thread has been on taking one side (Palestinian) and blaming the other (Israel). And your not the only one, but probably most self deluded. I’ve had these little spats with concerned leftists many times before, and they all say the same thing. That they support Israel, but then never once state anything, ANYTHING other than why Israel is at fault. Now fuck off once again wanker.
And BTW, that brilliant Tim F quote you copied. I don’t agree with it. You can quote me on that.
Publicola
Those history books are still being written; I started out citing one of the newest ones.
Only a closed-minded idiot could take repeated statements to effect of "there is more than enough blame to go around on both sides" to mean "Israel is always the one to blame."
You don’t understand it.
Done.
Raconteur
As any region does that has been polluted by imperialist Brits. Everything they & their Eurotrash cohorts touched turned to shit.
Comrade Stuck
@Publicola:
OR
only a liar would say "there is more than enough blame to go around on both sides, and then wank on that Israel is always the one to blame.
Fixed for New (cough) Historical Accuracy.
"You don’t understand it."
You are one conceited little Truther.
Comrade Stuck
@Publicola:
And or course, that’s what all Truthers say.
Publicola
@Comrade Stuck:
My god you are dense. Do you even understand plain English?
Provide direct quotes of mine where, in your delusional mind, you think I have "wanked on that Israel is always the one to blame."
Put up or shut up, you closed-minded idiot.
Comrade Stuck
@Publicola:
That would be the entirety of your posts as wanking, as apparently you don’t know about this vital Internet Tradition. Wanking is akin to verbal masturbation on a topic signifying a general bent of bias and wrongheadedness, and in your case, breathless "Truthing" to re write 40 year old history to somehow tease out that Israel was the actual aggressor in the 6 Day War. Good wanking doesn’t require and best leaves out direct quotes to expose the authors intent. Your saving grace is that you are a fairly good Wanker. Congrats!
And a Happy New Year :–)
Publicola
@Comrade Stuck:
What a closed-minded idiot – for your sake I hope you are trolling and not really as dense as you come off here.
Fortunately others here have far better reading comprehension skills than you do.
Here, let me spell it our for you one more time: there is plenty of blame to go around on both sides for the 6-Day war. Which is to saym in my view that was certainly not a case where Israel was "the one to blame."
Comrade Stuck
@Publicola:
If you mean do most now commenting here views Israel as the main problem, then I agree. That doesn’t make them right.
I chopped off the smarmy first part of your statement on purpose, well, because it was smarmy.
So you agreed with me all along. Israel was not the instigator (and one side has to be) in the 6 day war. Why didn’t you say so earlier and we could have saved a lot of bandwith
And occasionally I do troll this site, when it’s needed, possibly on this topic. But I’ve been an every day regular for about a year now, mostly not trolling, nor close minded. Though sometimes an idiot.
Comrade Stuck
You have a little time left to get in the last word Publicola. With next thread this one will fall behind the curtain and below the fold. And be very dead.
Publicola
@Comrade Stuck:
I didn’t say that, either. What, exactly, do you mean by "instigator" in this context?
Comrade Stuck
@Publicola: :
caused the conflict. and in this context history has judged it was Arab aggression. sorry, but that’s the case until new history changes it.
my last post here
sorry, this thread is expired. You will have to repartee the subject in another thread.
Publicola
@Comrade Stuck:
You really think that only one side can "cause" a conflict?
I disagree – with respect to complex issues I don’t think in simple binary.