I had vowed to break from blogging until the New Year, but it is difficult to remain silent in the face of
the horrific bloodshed now occurring in Gaza -- and
the escalation threatened by Israeli Defense Minister Barak. The death toll is now well above 300, a good chunk of them civilians. If Israel carries through on its threat of a ground invasion, that number will rise dramatically.
And remember,
as my friend Tim points out, the population of Gaza is not only the most densely packed in the world but it is also
physically trapped. The tin-pot dictatorship which we gleefully bankroll in Egypt has shown
no hesitation in shooting down panicked Gazans trying to flee across the border.
The Gazans are also trapped politically. Squeezed between a reckless fundamentalist Hamas regime, and a ruthless Israeli enemy that seems bound to a policy of smashing and crushing vengeance.
You can affix blame by pointing to whichever date is convenient for your own particular political bias. You're free to engage in any fairy tale that gives you moral succor.
If you wish, you can start this history of events two weeks ago when Hamas let a cease-fire expire and began pointlessly and rather ineffectively pumping and lobbing crude rockets and mortars into southern Israel. I don't know how Hamas expected Israel to respond -- given the longer history of this conflict-- but this barbaric over-reaction seems 100% predictable. So, one has to imagine that whatever it's byzantine logic, Hamas wanted this bloodshed. God maybe or may not be great, but the Gazans could sure use some of his help right now.
Or we can start history in 2006 when the U.S., Israel and other western powers refused to recognize the democratic electoral victory of Hamas in Palestinian elections. Instead of allowing Hamas to assume the responsibilities of government and perhaps integrate itself into a political process, the reaction was to quarantine Hamas and feed its martrydom and paranoia. And fill its ranks with no recruits.
Perhaps some would like to start the clock in 2005 when Israel began to withdraw from Gaza without any coordination with the Pals, creating precisely the vacuum filled by Hamas.
Some will want to go back to the year 2000 Camp David talks and blame Yassir Arafat for not reaching a comprehensive peace agreement when some believed it was in his grasp.
In fact, start history whenever you damn well please as all of the above points retain some degree of legitimacy -- but only a degree. For as former Israeli foreign policy advisor and diplomat
Daniel Levy argues, you should "never forget the basics." And that means the Israeli occupation itself.
"The core issue is still an unresolved conflict about ending an occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state - everything has to start from here to be serious (this is true also for Hamas who continue to heavily hint that they will accept the 1967 borders").
Indeed.
What needs to happen now, as Levy argues, is an internationally-negotiated de-escalation of the conflict and some really bold moves toward achieving the two-state solution.
Don't count on it. The Bush administration is
deaf and dumb on this issue, acting as mere press agents for the Israeli military. One can imagine that good that might have been achieved if over the last eight years the Bush White House had invested a tenth of the resources it has pissed away in Iraq in earnestly trying to broker a true Palestinian-Israeli settlement. It's mind-boggling to think how much goodwill in the Muslim world would have been won by such efforts. Instead, we can add the Gaza horror show to the folly in Iraq and conversely can easily imagine just how many new recruits are enlisting, and will be in enlisting, in the various Islamic fundamentalist death cults.
Not surprisingly,
there's a broader debate in Israel itself over this bloodshed than there is here. American politicians are engaged in an eternal competition to prove who is more blindly loyal to Israeli hawks. Period. full stop.
The Democrats, of course, are silent. Wore, they're vocal.
“Israel has a right, indeed a duty, to defend itself in response to the hundreds of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza over the past week,” Howard L. Berman , D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. “No government in the world would sit by and allow its citizens to be subjected to this kind of indiscriminate bombardment. The loss of innocent life is a terrible tragedy, and the blame for that tragedy lies with Hamas.” (So I guess we can count Rep. Berman among those who actually do believe this conflict began eleven days ago).
Obama, so far, has balked though the Middle East
now looms as his possible greatest out-of-the-gate challenge. This is the kind of stuff that
really worries me. Much much more than the I-don't-give-a-damn non-story about Reverend Friggin Warren.
The Middle East is in much worse shape that it was eight miserable years ago, and getting worse by the hour. In the midst of what might turn out to be another great economic Depression here at home, we are stumbling through the increasingly perilously minefields of the Holy Land-- a disaster much of our own making. And if we get bored with that, we can always turn our attention to the mounting confrontation between the nuclear-armed duo of India and Pakistan (the latter being one more Bush admin foreign policy catastrophe).
I'd wish you all a happy New Year but instead I counsel you to enjoy the remaining hours of this one.
2009 promises to be a bloody bitch.
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December 29th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Not surprisingly, there’s a broader debate in Israel itself over this bloodshed than there is here. American politicians are engaged in an eternal competition to prove who is more blindly loyal to Israeli hawks. Period. full stop.
Boy is that ever true. It’s not just the politicians; it’s also most mainstream media.
Have a happy new year as well, Marc, but I think that you’re right: 2009 will be a major challenge around the world.
December 29th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Another thought: you can see some interesting parallels between the way the Israelis left Gaza and the way the Portuguese left Angola. Both essentially bugged out leaving vacuums and chaos.
Amazing now no one seems to look at historical precedent these days when deciding policy.
December 29th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Gee, Marc. Why not go back to 1948, when the illegitimate state of “Israel” was born, via rapes, massacres, and ethnic cleansing? Why not look at six decades of violent aggression against the Palestinians and neighboring countries?
The main problem is the fundamental illegitimacy of the Jewish Supremacist state. Israel has as much “right” to exist as Hitler had a right to carry out the Holocaust. I.e., none.
The murderous attack on the Gaza Concentration Camp will, in the end, only hasten the day when the “occupation regime in Jerusalem vanishes from the page of time” (to paraphrase).
A humane solution would be a South African style one-state solution. In the meantime, Israel’s strength is leading it towards its end.
December 29th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
People should remember that there has not been a single rocket fired from the West Bank yet Israel continues to “expand” its existing illegal settlements and the West Bank is under constant attack, just today non violent protestors were shot at, killing one. What Israel is engaing in now, with the complicity of the lousy Arab regimes- i must say- is a full scale assault on a captive population. For those who say that Israel is defending itself-against who. Against 1.5 million people who are refugees, who are starving, who are caged in the world’s largest prison or concentration camp. Don’t Palestinians also have a right to defend themselves?
December 29th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
If Marc Cooper was blogging during WWII he’d be screaming about the bombing of German cities. Yet, even he, I imagine, would say that WWII was a war that needed to be fought. Some wars need to be fought. For example, to protect your citizens from indiscriminate bombardment.
The citizens of southern Israel have been under a horrific siege. I happened to be there during an alarm (turned out to be false) and if you could see the terrified, fleeing citizens, sobbing children, panic-stricken parents, etc. you would not dismiss this as trivial, even if relatively few people were killed (still, about 20 now). Kids in Sderot suffer all manner of psychological problems, can’t pass the SAT, can’t lead a normal life.
You can state the obvious truth, that any country would act in a similar manner to protect its citizens. You can say it until you’re blue in the face, and yet the left will not acknowledge it. Will not answer honestly the question what would you do if you and your kids were under the gun like that? Would you be satisfied with “proportional reponses” that brought no relief, year after year?
Marc Cooper brings up events of the past few years (one of his moonbat posters goes again back to 1948, what a surprise). One could debate the truth or falseness, but in any case what does this have to do with Israel’s present right/duty to protect its citizens? This is the fundamental logic at the heart of anti-Israel polemics. Because of the past, because of the original sin of Israel’s existence, Israel has, at best, a limited and defective right of self-defense. In common law Israel is like the thief who has broken into someone’s house at night. Does the thief have the right to protect himself when the owner attacks him? This is how Cooper and his posters see the argument. As someone who lives here with two small children it is not how I see the argument, and it is not how any other Israeli sees it either.
Someone at the WSJ said correctly that war can bring only two outcomes – victory and defeat. From statements that are starting to come out, Israel is fighting this war to win. This is not a punitive raid to rack up a high body count. After this is over, Hamas will no longer be in power in Gaza (who gives a shit that they were democratically elected? Hitler had the backing of the vast majority of Germans. This is another false trope of the left) The missiles will have stopped for good, or Israel will have been defeated. Again, if a country can’t fight a war to the finish to protect its citizens from bombardment, then war is never justifiable under any circumstances.
Just to pre-empt the ad hominems, I fully believe in a two state solution with an independant Palestine existing in the West Bank and Gaza. I volunteer at a legal rights organization that helps Palestinians file claims against the army and settlers, and have been to the West Bank and met with Palestinians many times. I am aware that Palestinians suffer constant harrassement, and that this may even be the norm. I loathe and despise the settler movement, and see it as one of the fundamental existential threats to the Zionist enterprise. One of the most deplorable things about Hamas rejectionism and rocket attacks is that it takes Israel’s attention off the need to deal with the settler movement, and come to an agreement with the Palestinians.
December 29th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
December 29th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Sorry, hyperlink failure.
December 30th, 2008 at 5:59 am
December 30th, 2008 at 7:12 am
It is interesting how nary a critial word is heard from the liberal side against the attacks on Israel. It is only when Israel responds that all the media show up with their sympathetic ear and cameras, but not for Israel of course.
Israel would be foolish to not finish the job, this time, of dismantling Hamas. This silly bleeding heart idea a of ‘measured response’, like we should have just counted the number of ships, buildings, and other loses the Japanese destroyed in their 1944 attack, and responded only with a similar destructive response. It’s insane.
These nut jobs in Hamas, funded by Iran, and intending on destroying Israel. had better be destroyed by Israel instead, this time. It borders on insanity to continue to put up with their insane hatred.
December 30th, 2008 at 8:55 am
I’m quite sick of hearing about the ‘healthy debate’ that takes place in Israel. Yeah, it’s good compared to the one we have here, but so what? What ever comes of it? We’re supposed to believe that there is a growing sense of Israel realizing the error in it’s ways? If that ever should have happened, it should have been after the Lebanon debacle and it didn’t happen. It’s the same old bullshit all the time. The Israeli public is complicit in the actions of their government and shouldn’t be too surprised when a few rockets fall amongst them.
Also, what kind of dumb shits are living near the Israeli border with Gaza? At least the Gazans are trapped there, the same can’t be said for the Israelis. Call it cold, or if you’re an idiot, call it “leftist moral equivalence”, but my sympathy for them is difficult to rouse.
December 30th, 2008 at 10:42 am
The Israeli/Palestinian situation looks fairly intractable.
If there’s a solution, I’m not aware of one.
No resolution, for either side, looks likely.
December 30th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Israel is a legal state. based on international law. Palestinians leaders, voted in by Palestinians themselves, are among the few in the MIddle East to continue to refuse accept this.
This is OK, until they announce this refuseal with violence. The ball has been in their court, no pun intended, from the beginning.
December 30th, 2008 at 11:13 am
I tend to agree with John M about the dishonest way we tend to evoke the “vigorous debate” in Israel. The intention may be good but in the process we end up producing a kind of fiction, that there exists a real and significant opposition to the strangulation and horrrors we see inflicted in Gaza. Lets remember that 80 per cent of Israelis support the brutal action and that Palestinian lives are being used to further electoral ambitions of Israeli politicians. Gideon Levy, who wirtes for Haaretz, is surely someone Marc would cite as being part of the “healthy debate”, here’s what he recently wrote about the feckless Israeli peace camp.
“The Israeli peace camp was born in sin and died because of a lie: It was born as the legitimate son of the sin of occupation, and died the illegitimate son of the lie that “there is no partner” with whom to negotiate on the other side. Between September 1967 and October 2000, it spent 33 years waging the brave and determined struggle of a minority against a majority, “traitors” against “patriots,” “defilers of Israel” against “lovers of Israel,” David against Goliath. Today, we must painfully admit that it was struggle that did not produce much.
At the end of Camp David, when he told us “there’s no partner,” Ehud Barak propagated an even bigger lie: that we have a peace camp. How pleasant it is to delude ourselves that we have one, and how depressing it is to know that we don’t. There is no left – just empty words. When the only demonstration in town is over student tuition, when the only discourse in city and village alike concerns the “Big Brother” TV show, and the loudest cries are over “corruption” and Olmert’s frequent-flier miles instead of over the jailed Palestinian who is bleeding and beaten, who hasn’t had a normal day in his life – then we know for sure that there is no peace camp in Israel in 2008.
Maybe there never was? Maybe a camp that is defeated with such intolerable ease just needs to be told there is no partner in order to simply disappear. The moment this camp witnesses terrorism – that means of struggle for all those who seek liberation – it shuts itself down at home, planning the next package tour and watching a reality show, in fear, silence, betrayal and sick apathy, while half an hour away, the cruel occupation lives on. It’s much crueler today than it was back then, when a dozen Matzpen members printed that public appeal, a voice crying in the wilderness, the barren desert wilderness of the Israeli left and of Israeli society as a whole…
The term “left” and the expression “peace camp” need to be removed from the dictionary of Hebrew terms. We no longer have the right to make use of them. Any use whatsoever. “
December 30th, 2008 at 11:56 am
How long until we turn our naivete to empirical insight?
The Israeli Zionists and most of the world’s avid supporters of Zionism DO NOT WANT A TWO STATE SOLUTION — no matter what they say. They want to disappear the Palestinians and have all of Ancient Israel and Judea for the Jews. That’s what they want. That’s what they believe will make them safe. They can’t admit this, but their actions beg the question.
Until we get this, Marc’s analysis, and all the comments, are beside the point.
There cannot be a Jewish state. Period. That is undemocratic. Nor can there be a Muslim state. And, as much as many would like to turn the U.S. into a Christian state, that cannot happen and still have separation of church and state.
Therefore, only a ONE STATE SOLUTION will work. Unfortunately, that won’t happen for another generation or two…and not without much more pain and suffering.
“You stupid, despoiling humans!” ~ Klatu von Gort
LC
Born and raised a Zionist, I now reject it totally as racist
December 30th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
It’s getting ugly.
December 30th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
The 51st state ???
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/davidcorn/2008/12/gaza-crisis-check-out-the-isra.html
December 30th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
reg doesn’t trust anyone wearing a flag pin, especially if it has two flags. He doesn’t have to worry about Obama doing it.
December 30th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
This “two national flags” issue is obviously a sore point for some denizens of the former Confederacy.
December 30th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Bits and pieces from another blog
Ha’aretz: (All the quotes below come from Jewish journalists writing in recent editions of Ha’aretz.)
You know the reality of Gaza today: “The tremendous population density in the Gaza Strip does not allow a ‘surgical operation’ over an extended period that would minimize damage to civilian populations.” “There are many corpses and wounded, every moment another casualty is added to the list of the dead, and there is no more room in the morgue. . A mother whose three school-age children were killed, and are piled one on top of top of the other in the morgue, screams and then cries, screams again and then is silent.”
And you know that some Israelis are outraged: “Israel’s violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom.”
Threads and threads ago when the argument about the situation erupted I said there was no resolution except that this conflict would be a lightning rod and once the dust settles on the corpses and there will then be the revelation that ethnic bigotry is a useless motherfucker spawning nothing but motherfuckerness.
It is going to escalate and escalate until…
December 30th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Harold Pinter is dead.
His Nobel speech:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GY2Z27Y-HJE
December 30th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
reg: “This ‘two national flags’ issue is obviously a sore point for some denizens of the former Confederacy.”
Heh heh heh, ouch.
December 30th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
World is not paying much attention to it. I wonder why, when there is some reporters get kidnapped then it is world’s issue but where are those people now? It is disgusting to see these horrific acts.
David
December 31st, 2008 at 12:31 am
In my CA neighborhood, middle class teenagers take it out on street-parked cars. Easy to imagine the boys transplanted to Gaza and lobbing (mostly ineffectual) rockets towards Tel Aviv. Heck, if I were a Gazan mom, I’d be cheering them on.
Great piece, Marc. The situation is so fucked it’s hard to know where to start the sputter, but you make a go of it. My only hope for the future is that not so long ago (but neatly expunged from his campaign biography, with some collusion from the press) Barack Obama had a few Palestinian friends and was sympathetic to their history.
December 31st, 2008 at 6:42 am
The answer to this conflict lies solely in the hands of the Palestinians, as it always has.
Just stop attacking your neighbor and you will not be attacked in return. War is ugly and violent and almost all democratically elected people avoid them until you put their democracy at risk,, then they get very violent very quickly.
Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran are verbally committed to the destruction of a small democracy next door. Israel must destroy Hamas this time. They must not stop until the defeat is complete.
War is violent and innocent people stuck in the middle get killed and maimed. The big and glaring difference is one side purposely targets them.
Pure hatred is pure evil.
December 31st, 2008 at 7:27 am
Jim R,
Square that comment of yours with this fact Ahmed cited above:
Many years I remember a dedicated Zionist who told me that “the Arabs should just get out of Judea and Sumeria and give it back to my people.”
He lived in Brooklyn and his family was from New Brunswick, NJ. I asked him if he was prepared to return where he lived now to the Canarsie Indians and his family’s home to the Raritan Indians. He said “this is different.”
Not really.
December 31st, 2008 at 8:25 am
“The answer to this conflict lies solely in the hands of the Palestinians, as it always has.”
That is actually a completely crazy, ahistorical, baseless and ridiculously ill-informed statement. Unfortunately, such nonsense is all too common among Israel’s proponents. And my judgement comes from someone who thinks the Palestinian leadership has been a disaster. There are lots of ways to be completely counter-productive and useless in these discussions, and Jim R’s crackpot reductionism represents probably the most common one in the US.
“The situation is so fucked” – too much clinging to guns and religion.
December 31st, 2008 at 10:18 am
Courtesy of Zbig, for the “stunningly superficial”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taba_Summit
December 31st, 2008 at 11:32 am
Maybe this guy’s advice can help (although probably not):
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1228602649
December 31st, 2008 at 12:52 pm
“too much clinging to guns and religion.”
Speaking of “denizens of the former Confederacy”…
December 31st, 2008 at 5:26 pm
You guys can elbow each other and snort at your cleverness, but understand that I have never supported the Confederacy, you can’t bother me with your comments about it, that your generalizations about Southerners are as bad as any about blacks, and your California didn’t exactly play a major role in that war which you proudly claim as your heritage.
December 31st, 2008 at 7:57 pm
“I have never supported the Confederacy”
Just it’s spirit, with crap like Obama shining a white woman’s shoes.
January 1st, 2009 at 1:57 pm
And, in your spirit, you excuse past war crimes.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Oh the horror, Miss Scarlett.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:58 pm
It’s interesting to know that you think the complete looting of citizens and burning of cities by the military in war is so funny.
January 1st, 2009 at 9:36 pm
You’re a total phony peddling neo-Confederate history.
January 1st, 2009 at 10:03 pm
I do happen to think it’s funny that you quote without attribution someone who is not a historian but claims in a remarkably inaccurate, distorted blog post that Gen. Sherman was one of history’s two worst war criminals – and expect to be taken seriously.
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:34 am
Maybe Israel should burn down the entire Gaza Strip, like Sherman did through Georgia, since people like you seem to have no problem with that. I assure you, the information on Sherman’s war crimes is accurate.
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:45 am
There were no Geneva Conventions back then in the Civil War. There are now.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:48 am
The First Geneva Convention is one of several Geneva Conventions. It is more formally known as the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field, 1864.
There also was no law against slavery, but it was still wrong.
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:07 am
The Confederacy was treated too gently…a hundred subsequent years of white rule by racist terror is proof of that.
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
reg: The Confederacy was treated too gently…
Using your terror criteria, Muslims should be bombed into oblivion.
reg, you really are very terrible historian. But, one thing is sure, the “hundred years of racist rule” was carried out by the Democrats.
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Who’ve since joined the GOP…
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:56 pm
I’m a “terrible historian” while you’re comparing the Israel/Palestine conflict to our Civil War. Right.
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:29 pm
reg, the Republicans in the South were the only ones to bring literacy and class to the voting process. The Democrats are responsible for race problems in the South, yet, they ran away from their responsibility.
Today (as usual), Democrats are opportunists. They can be for civil rights or against them. They can be for the Iraq war or against it. They can be pro-Israel or against Israel. It’s whatever gets them votes at the time, and they sure counted on the black vote once Johnson got the Voting Rights Act through.
On the history issue, I was referencing terrorism, as you brought that up. You’re bad at both history and logic.
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I’m officially bored by your stupid shit.
January 3rd, 2009 at 7:14 am
Bored or frustrated?
Destroying a country is okay with you if it’s done for your cause. So, don’t claim that the U.S. is wrong in Iraq or that Israel is wrong in Gaza if you don’t take the same position for all destruction of states and killing of its citizens.
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
“they(Democrats) sure counted on the black vote once Johnson got the Voting Rights Act through.”
Reg and Woody fight the Civil War again, and I think Woody is going to loose that war again. Even without reg doing the Sherman march on him.
The South and Republicans have a dismal record helping to finally free Black folk Woody. We have Lincoln and maybe Eisenhower to point to. The Democrats get all the rest of the credit.
Give it up and keep quiet on this loser. And I wish the idiot with the stupid ‘Magic Negro” song, welcoming our first Black President, would just go now where he’s driving the Republican Party…..straight to hell.
March 13th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
2]Get your own Nintendo Wii
The games console with one of the strangest names on the planet (it’s pronounced ‘wee’) is also one of the most innovative. In fact, with its potential to change the face of the gaming landscape, Wii may be on the verge of a new era, if you’ll pardon the pun.
The $400 Wii package comprises a square white console unit and stand that plugs into your TV or AV receiver, a wireless sensor bar that connects to the console and receives wireless commands from the battery-powered paddle-style Wiimote controller. Basic composite cables are supplied, but if you have a plasma or LCD the $50 component cable options will deliver better picture quality. The console also supports an SD slot, USB port and a DVD drive for games.
Games data can be saved to SD memory cards, which weren’t officially released at the time of publication, but in lieu of their arrival, GameCube memory cards will suffice. The USB port can’t be used to save games either, but will enable future hardware upgrades such as a hard drive or DVD player, although no announcements have been made to this effect.
Despite its DVD drive, the console is not a DVD player (a modification chip is required if you want to watch movies). Nor is it the high definition, hard drive-toting, networked multimedia online multiplayer gaming machine that is the Xbox 360 or forthcoming Playstation 3. Instead, it presents as the most affordable ‘next generation’ games machine available and, certainly, lacks for no important ingredients if you want to have fun.
May 13th, 2010 at 7:51 am
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