financeguy
ONE love, blood, life
To financeguy and Muldfeld,
I would like to apologize to you for my harsh words.
Consider it forgotten about.
To financeguy and Muldfeld,
I would like to apologize to you for my harsh words.
What about simple rockets?Somehow I feel indiscriminately firing missiles into civilian residential areas would not be high on my list of possible solutions.
So Israel attacks Gaza and the news is all over it.
Israel says the reasons for the attacks is due to numerous rocket attacks against them in recent days.
Why were there no reports on this? Does the media only think it is news when it is Israel doing the attacking, or did these attacks just never happen?
Or did I simply miss it?
Someone enlighten me, please.
What about simple rockets?
It would be a proportionate response, shoot a few hundred of the unguided things at Palestinian population centers, or maybe send in some suicide bombers for good measure.
Somehow I feel indiscriminately firing missiles into civilian residential areas would not be high on my list of possible solutions.
300+ people die at once when Israel attacks, single digits die over the last couple years by Hamas attacks. Do you really need to jump to bias to explain this?
I have no bias on this whatsoever. I honestly wanted to know why there is so much coverage when Israel attacks, while you can hear a pin drop when Hamas attacks.
I think it's because random rocket shelling from the Palestinian territories is not unique and goes on relatively regularly (and frequently), but with very few casualties. This is because the areas that are just north of Gaza are not particularly populated, and because the rockets are crude and unguided. I am not sure what the numbers are, but I think that Hamas has killed less than 20 Israelis while in power in Gaza, and something like 2 or 3 in the recent rocketing. Not to say that this is not a tragedy and not to say that because they are crude and ineffective, this is okay, but just due to the way our media works, I don't think they much care to report a handful of stray rockets a week in the Middle East when most of the readership probably doesn't care either at this point.
My best guess, anyway.
I think it's because random rocket shelling from the Palestinian territories is not unique and goes on relatively regularly (and frequently), but with very few casualties. This is because the areas that are just north of Gaza are not particularly populated, and because the rockets are crude and unguided. I am not sure what the numbers are, but I think that Hamas has killed less than 20 Israelis while in power in Gaza, and something like 2 or 3 in the recent rocketing. Not to say that this is not a tragedy and not to say that because they are crude and ineffective, this is okay, but just due to the way our media works, I don't think they much care to report a handful of stray rockets a week in the Middle East when most of the readership probably doesn't care either at this point.
My best guess, anyway.
Do you really need to jump to conclusions?
I have no bias on this whatsoever. I honestly wanted to know why there is so much coverage when Israel attacks, while you can hear a pin drop when Hamas attacks.
Israel says it is counterattacking due to recent Hamas attacks. Is there any information out there as to the nature of these attacks? Or is Israel making it more than it really is?
And really, does it matter if there are lesser amounts of people dying in one attack vs. the other? It's still an attack.
This blog is on a light schedule today and tomorrow due to various New Years related program activities, but it's worth quickly responding to Jonathan Chait's post on Israel and Palestine. Chait makes a common claim, which is that all analysis of the Israel/Palestinian conflict has to begin from a place of intentionality. "Hamas has a problem with Israel because Hamas believes Israel has no right to exist," he writes. "Israel has a problem with Hamas because Hamas believes Israel has no right to exist. If Hamas lay down all its weapons, Israel would lift its blockade. If Israel lay down all its weapons, Hamas would kill as many Israelis as it could."
There's truth to this. But it can also obscure more than it can reveal. One important disconnect in Israel/Palestine debate is that Israel's supporters tend to focus on what the Palestinians want while Palestine's supporters tend to focus on what the Israelis do. Israel's defenders, for instance, make a lot of Hamas's willingness to kill large numbers of civilians. Palestine's defenders make a lot of the fact that Israel actually kills large numbers of Palestinian civilians.
To make it more concrete, in July, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem reported that 123 Israeli minors had been killed by Palestinians since the second intifada began in 2000, compared with 951 Palestinian minors killed by Israeli security forces. Israel's supporters emphasize that the children were not killed purposefully, but were collateral damage of targeted operations. By contrast, Palestinian suicide bombers have targeted children directly. Israelis define their struggle in contrast to the intentions of Hamas. Palestinians define their struggle in terms of the actions of the Israelis.
Without understanding this distinction, it's hard to understand the two sides of the conflict. Hamas survives because Palestinian society is radicalized against Israel. Palestinian society is radicalized against Israel because Israel's operations have devastated their society. Be assured that when Palestinians look at the 1,000 or so children killed by the Israeli armed forces, they do not comfort themselves with the fact that those deaths were accidental. And, indeed, a case can be made that collateral damage from air strikes in dense urban areas are not accidental. They are expected.
Conversely, Chait is correct to say that the Israelis see little hope of negotiation with an enemy that denies their basic claim to existence. They feel rightly threatened by the presence of Hamas, the oppressive reality of terrorism, and the hatred of their Arab neighbors. Israel is far stronger than Palestine, but it judges itself in constant danger.
There's no easy way to bridge the distance between these perspectives. As Aaron David Miller has written, "the prospects of reconciling the interests of an occupied nation with those of a threatened one [are] slim to none." The Israelis see themselves as threatened innocents, not oppressors. They point to the public statements of Hamas, and they are right. The Palestinians see themselves as an occupied people, not aggressors. They point to their death toll and the settlements, and they are right.
There is nothing specifically incorrect in the argument Chait draws. But the intellectual clarity of the distinction is so far from the lived experience from the Palestinians as to be meaningless. He says Hamas would kill more children if they could. The Palestinians say the Israelis kill more children. Which is why Israel's attack on Gaza was so unwise. The Palestinians just watched the Israelis slaughter dozens of children, mothers, and other innocents. Protestations that they deserved it because Hamas threatens to kill Israeli innocents will not make sense to them. And so the battle will continue, with Israel's supporters comforting themselves by looking at Hamas's stated intentions and Hamas's supporters justifying themselves by pointing towards the fresh graves of their dead. I don't know how you reconcile the interests of a threatened nation with an occupied one. But you have to start by recognizing the lived experience on both sides, not just one.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, it will always be Israeli overkill. Because most of Hamas' untargeted rocket launches and outposts are located in population centers.
In the middle of the desert.
Seriously, I have no recommendation. Just not surprised when Israel retaliates for months and months of shelling and hundreds of innocent people die.
and the more i look at the situation, the more convinced i am that what causes the frenzy is not so much the conditions under which the Palestinians live, but the sheer fact that there are Jews there.
It's disappointing to see you swallow up and regurgitate neo-conservative, imperialist, propaganda, ascribing opposition to Israel as 'anti-semitism' is really and ultimately no more and no less than an excuse to do nothing and pretend there isn't a problem.
AFP: Iran shuts down leading reformist newspaperThe Iranian press watchdog shut down leading reformist newspaper Kargozaran on Wednesday over publication of a piece criticising Palestinian militants, the official IRNA news agency reported.
"Kargozaran has been banned over a media offence and the case has been referred to the court," Mohammad Parvizi, who is in charge of domestic media at the culture ministry, told IRNA.
He said the ban was ordered over "a piece yesterday which justifies the Zionist regime's crimes against humanity in Gaza and portrays the Palestinian resistance as terrorists who cause the deaths of children and civilians by taking up position in kindergartens and hospitals."
Kargozaran's director Morteza Sajadian confirmed the closure and said the piece in question was a statement by a radical pro-reform student group, the Office to Consolidate Unity.
"The statement was not supposed to be carried, it was mistakenly printed," he told AFP, hoping the ban would be only temporary.
Kargozaran's licence holder is the Executives of Construction, a political party close to former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The paper, which started publication three years ago, has been a frequent target of attack from rival hardline media over its content, which has been perceived as hostile to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Under Ahmadinejad, Iranian newspapers, websites and news agencies of all political persuasions have been hit by a string of closures.
Iran is a staunch supporter of the Islamist Hamas movement which controls Gaza and does not recognise its archfoe Israel, which has been pounding the territory with a deadly air blitz for the past five days.
It's disappointing to see you swallow up and regurgitate neo-conservative, imperialist, propaganda, ascribing opposition to Israel as 'anti-semitism' is really and ultimately no more and no less than an excuse to do nothing and pretend there isn't a problem.
far, far worse things happen in the world to other peoples. this is not to excuse anything. this is making distinctions between situations.
what makes this situation so unique is that there are Jews involved.
The only reason why 'anti-semitism' is brought into it to obscure debate on the central issue - which is the theft of the Palestinians' land, and their eviction from that land. The issue is fundamentally about human rights - indeed, the most fundamental of all human rights, which is the right to property.
Are Jews (and their descendants) who were evicted from Arab states when Israel was created entitled to restitution?The only reason why 'anti-semitism' is brought into it to obscure debate on the central issue - which is the theft of the Palestinians' land, and their eviction from that land. The issue is fundamentally about human rights - indeed, the most fundamental of all human rights, which is the right to property.
The only reason why 'anti-semitism' is brought into it to obscure debate on the central issue - which is the theft of the Palestinians' land, and their eviction from that land. The issue is fundamentally about human rights - indeed, the most fundamental of all human rights, which is the right to property.