Big Day For Int'l News; Ground Offensive Begins In Gaza....

[Econoline]

JULY 25, 2014
ISRAEL'S OTHER WAR
BY ETGAR KERET

In the past week I’ve seen and heard the popular statement “let the I.D.F. win” more and more frequently. It’s been posted on social media, spray-painted on walls, and chanted in demonstrations. Lots of young people are quoting it on Facebook, and they seem to think it’s a phrase that arose in response to the current military operation in Gaza. But I’m old enough to remember how it evolved: first formulated as a bumper sticker, and later turning into a mantra. Of course, this slogan is not addressed to Hamas or to the international community—it’s intended for Israelis, and it contains within it the twisted world view that has been guiding Israel for the past twelve years.

The first erroneous assumption it contains is that there are some people in Israel who are preventing the Army from winning. These supposed saboteurs could be me, my neighbor, or any other person who questions the premise and purpose of this war. All these weirdos, daring to ask questions or raise concerns regarding the conduct of our government, tying our military’s capable hands with nagging op-eds and defeatist calls for humanity and empathy, are allegedly the only thing separating the I.D.F. from a perfect victory.

The second, much more dangerous idea that this slogan contains is that the I.D.F. actually could win. “We’re prepared to receive all these missiles non-stop,” many southern-Israelis keep saying on the news, “as long as we can finish this, once and for all.”

Twelve years, five operations against Hamas (four of them in Gaza), and still we have this same convoluted slogan. Young men who were only first-graders during Operation Defensive Shield are now soldiers invading Gaza by land. In each of these operations there have been right-wing politicians and military commentators who pointed out that “this time we’ll have to pull all the stops, take it all the way, until the end.” Watching them on television, I can’t help but ask myself, What is this end they’re striving toward? Even if each and every Hamas fighter is taken out, does anyone truly believe that the Palestinian people’s aspiration for national independence will disappear with them? Before Hamas, we fought against the P.L.O., and after Hamas, assuming, hopefully, that we’re still around, we’ll probably find ourselves fighting against another Palestinian organization. The Israeli military can win the battles, but peace and quiet for the citizens of Israel will only be achieved through political compromise. But this, according to the patriotic powers running the current war, is something that we’re not supposed to say, because this kind of talk is precisely what’s stopping the I.D.F. from winning. Ultimately, when this operation is over and the tally is taken of the many dead bodies, on our side and theirs, the accusing finger will once again be pointed at us, the saboteurs.

In 2014, in Israel, the definition of legitimate discourse has changed entirely. Discussion is divided between those who are “pro-I.D.F.” and those who are against it. Right-wing thugs chanting “death to Arabs” and “death to leftists” on the streets of Jerusalem or Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s call to boycott Arab-Israeli businesses protesting the operation in Gaza are considered patriotic, while demands to stop the operation or mere expressions of empathy about the deaths of women and children in Gaza are perceived as a betrayal against flag and country. We are faced with the false, anti-democratic equation that argues that aggression, racism, and lack of empathy mean love of the homeland, while any other opinion—especially one that does not encourage the use of power and the loss of soldiers’ lives—is nothing less than an attempt to destroy Israel as we know it.

At times it seems that there are two wars going on. On one front, the military is battling against Hamas. On the other, a government minister, who called Arab colleagues “terrorists” on the floor of the Knesset, and hooligans who intimidate peace activists on social media, jointly persecute “the enemy within”: anyone who speaks differently. There is no doubt that Hamas is posing a threat to our safety and to our children’s safety, but can the same thing be said about entertainers such as the comedian Orna Banai, the singer Achinoam Nini, or my wife, the film director Shira Geffen, all of whom were vilified in hateful and menacing ways when they publicly expressed dismay about the deaths of Palestinian children? Do the extreme attacks against them constitute another defense necessary for our survival, or are they merely a dark outburst of hate and rage? Are we really so weak and scared that any opinion that differs from the consensus must be muted, lest it provoke death threats against not only those voicing it, but their children as well?

Many people tried to convince me not to publish this piece. “You have a little boy,” one of my friends told me last night. “Sometimes it’s better to be smart than to be right.” I’ve never been right, and I must not be too smart, either, but I am willing to fight for my right to express my opinion with the same ferocity that the I.D.F. is now showing in Gaza. This war is not about my own personal opinion, which may be wrong or pathetic. It’s for this place where I live, and which I love.

On August 10, 2006, near the end of the Second Lebanon War, the writers Amos Oz, A. B. Yehoshua, and David Grossman held a press conference in which they urged the government to reach an immediate ceasefire. I was in a taxi and heard the report on the radio. The driver said, “What do those pieces of shit want, huh? They don’t like the Hezbollah suffering? These assholes want nothing more than to hate our country.” Five days later, David Grossman buried his son in the military plot at the Mount Herzl cemetery. Apparently that “piece of shit” wanted a few other things than to hate this country. Most importantly, he wanted his son, like so many other young men who were killed in those last, superfluous days of fighting, to come home alive.

It’s an awful thing to make a truly tragic mistake, one that costs many lives. It’s worse to make that same mistake over and over again. Four operations in Gaza, an immense number of Israeli and Palestinian hearts that have stopped beating, and we keep ending up in the same place. The only thing that actually changes is Israeli society’s tolerance for criticism. It’s become clear during this operation that the right wing has lost its patience in all matters regarding that elusive term, “freedom of speech.” In the past two weeks, we’ve seen right wingers beating left wingers with clubs, Facebook messages promising to send left-wing activists to the gas chambers, and denunciations of anyone whose opinion delays the military on its way to victory. It turns out that this bloody road we walk from operation to operation is not as cyclical as we may have once thought. This road is not a circle, it’s a downward spiral, leading to new lows, which, I’m sad to say, we’ll be unlucky enough to experience.

A version of this piece appeared in Hebrew in Yediot Ahronot. Translated by Yardenne Greenspan.

source (my emphasis)

[BoSoxGal]

Excellent essay, Econo - thanks for sharing it here!

[Gob]

Israeli fire kills nineteen in Gaza UN school
Attack on school used as shelter condemned by UN agency as "source of universal shame" that breaks international law.


Israeli shells have struck a UN school in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 19 people and wounding scores more, after Israeli ground troops made a significant push into the territory.

Wednesday’s shelling of the Jabaliya refugee camp was the second time in a week that a UN school sheltering hundreds of homeless Palestinians had been hit.

Christopher Gunness, the UNRWA's spokesman, said the attack was a "source of universal shame" and blamed Israeli forces.

"We have visited the site and gathered evidence. We have analysed fragments, examined craters and other damage. Our initial assessment is that it was Israeli artillery that hit our school, in which 3,300 people had sought refuge.

"I condemn in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces. I call on the international community to take deliberate international political action to put an immediate end to the continuing carnage."

Gunness said that UN representatives have informed Israeli forces about the exact location of the school 17 times.

Many of those in the school had fled their homes in northern Gaza after Israel dropped leaflets warning them of an "upcoming phase" of action.

The Israeli military said fighters near the UN school had fired mortar bombs and Israeli forces had shot back.

"Earlier this morning, militants fired mortar shells at [Israeli] soldiers from the vicinity of the UNRWA school in Jabaliya. In response, soldiers fired towards the origins of fire, and we're still reviewing the incident," a spokeswoman said.

Israel announced a four-hour "humanitarian window" on Wednesday, starting at midday GMT, but said it did not include areas where its soldiers were operating - about half of Gaza.

[Econoline]

Staggering photo: evacuation notices from Israel warning
residents in Gaza to leave their homes or be bombed.
pic.twitter.com/uhuaN9mNjk

[Gob]

This'll have them shitting themselves in Israel...

People across Cornwall have been speaking out against Israel’s actions in Gaza as the civilian death toll in the beleaguered territory continues to rise.




While world leaders debate who broke the latest ceasefire between the Israeli Defence Force and the militant group Hamas in the Palestinian territory, outrage at the impact on civilians grows.

On Friday West Cornwall MP Andrew George condemned Israel for “terrorising” the population in Gaza and urged Prime Minister David Cameron to show international leadership in the face of the Israeli “onslaught”.

He described the assault by the IDF, one of the largest armies in the world, on Gaza, a territory roughly a tenth the size of Cornwall, as a “disproportionate act of cold blooded murder.”

Elsewhere in Cornwall people have raised their voices in public and on social media to oppose the killing of civilians.

Yesterday in Truro members of the Socialist Party set up a stall next to the Garden Truro event campaigning against the attack on Gaza with the slogan “No More Carnage in Gaza.”

On Facebook, a Cornwall based page has appeared urging the Government to send the Royal Navy hospital ship RFA Argus, currently based in Falmouth, to spearhead humanitarian relief in Gaza.

Veronica Vickery, from Penzance, who launched the petition, said: “The hospital ship RFA Argus is moored in Falmouth. She is uniquely designed for this type of necessity.

“Since Israel has abrogated its responsibility to the citizens of Gaza, we request that the British Government unilaterally and rapidly deploys RFA Argus to Gaza.

“We should be at the forefront of the humanitarian response, a pioneering lead from the UK in the face of traumatic world events.”

Israel began Operation Protective Edge on July 8 as a response to rocket attacks by Palestinian group Hamas.

Since then at least 1,360 Palestinians have been killed, mostly civilians, by aerial bombing and ground based artillery bombardment.

An estimated 59 Israelis have been killed, 57 of them soldiers



Read more: http://www.westbriton.co.uk/People-Corn ... z39NQ9XEvA

[Lord Jim]

There's a new ugly wave of anti-semitism in Europe, but for the most part it doesn't involve Europeans:

Anti-Semitism Rises in Europe Amid Israel-Gaza Conflict



BERLIN — Across Europe, the conflict in Gaza is generating a broader backlash against Jews, as threats, hate speech and even violent attacks proliferate in several countries.

Most surprising perhaps, a wave of incidents has washed over Germany, where atonement for the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes is a bedrock of the modern society. A commitment to the right of Israel to exist is ironclad. Plaques and memorials across the country exhort, “Never Again.” Children are taught starting in elementary school that their country’s Nazi history must never be repeated. Even so, academics say the recent episodes may reflect a rising climate of anti-Semitism that they had observed before the strife over Gaza.
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage


This week, the police in the western city of Wuppertal detained two young men on suspicion of throwing firebombs at the city’s new synagogue; the attack early Tuesday caused no injuries. In Frankfurt on Thursday, the police said, a beer bottle was thrown through a window at the home of a prominent critic of anti-Semitism. She heard an anti-Jewish slur after going to the balcony to confront her assailant, The Frankfurter Rundschau reported. An anonymous caller to a rabbi threatened last week to kill 30 Frankfurt Jews if the caller’s family in Gaza was harmed, the police said.

The string of incidents comes after Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned anti-Semitic chants from pro-Palestinian demonstrators and President Joachim Gauck called on Germans to “raise their voices if there is a new anti-Semitism being strutted on the street.”

But even as the police have clamped down on demonstrators, banning slogans that target Jews instead of Israeli policies, a spike in violence has spread fear among Jews, not only in Germany but also in other European countries.

More Jews have begun leaving France in recent months, following anti-Semitism that has spilled onto the streets since the start of the Gaza conflict almost a month ago. While most of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been peaceful, a small number of violent protesters, many of them young Arab men, has targeted Jewish businesses and synagogues.

French authorities have strongly condemned the violence and, citing public-safety concerns, have refused to authorize a small number of pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Others have spoken of a need to counter anti-Semitism among certain segments of the country’s Muslim youth.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls spoke last week of a “new,” “normalized” anti-Semitism. “It blends the Palestinian cause, jihadism, the detestation of Israel and the hatred of France and its values,” he told the National Assembly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/world ... itism.html

If one watched most of the TV coverage on this, it would be easy to miss the fact that the problem here primarily involves not indigenous right-wing bully boys, but non ethnically European Muslim populations, since most of the reports seem to omit this centrally important fact...

Sort of like when they were having riots in France a little while back, and you could have watched report after report after report, and never have learned that the rioting was being carried out almost exclusively by young Muslims...

[Gob]

Is it antisemitism, or anti-Isreali policy?

[Gob]

A global poll in and about several countries, conducted for the BBC long before the latest strife in Gaza, reported that negative views of Israel’s influence in the world outweighed positive ones by more than two to one (see chart 1). In aggregate, Americans saw Israel favourably; Europeans did not. But plenty of Americans worry about Israel’s reputation. Barack Obama has fretted about his country’s “limited” ability to manage the “international fallout” were a Palestinian state no longer within reach. Delegitimisation, says Einat Wilf, a former Israeli parliamentarian and one of the authors of a three-year, as-yet-unpublished study of the topic at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) in Jerusalem, is becoming “a strategic threat”.

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/ ... -americans

[Crackpot]

woot! the US is still a net positive!

[Lord Jim]

Is it antisemitism, or anti-Isreali policy?

Since "Jewish businesses and synagogues" are being targeted, the answer to that would seem obvious...

Here's more:

In Toulouse, France, over the weekend, police arrested a man for throwing fire-bombs at a local Jewish center. The fire-bombs failed to ignite.

In Britain, police have recorded more than 100 anti-Jewish hate crimes since the Gaza conflict began, including an attack on a rabbi by four Muslim youths in Gateshead, a Hassidic enclave in north-east England, and bricks thrown through the windows of a Belfast synagogue on two successive nights.

In Norway, police have recommended the temporary closure of two Jewish museums, for fear of attack, while in Copenhagen on the weekend police dispersed a pro-Israel rally out of concern for the safety of the participants.

German TV showed protesters from the country's Arab minority threatening violence against Jews at a demonstration in Berlin on Thursday. Similar incidents took place in Frankfurt and Essen recently, according to police.

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jew ... s/1.607433

Last Sunday, chants of “Gas the Jews” and “Death to Jews” could be heard as pro-Palestinian demonstrators attacked businesses in the “Little Jerusalem" district of Paris.

http://www.ibtimes.com/gaza-conflict-tr ... pe-1641468

Of course one can oppose the policies of the Israeli government and not be an anti-semite. However it's equally true that being "anti-Israeli policies" is frequently a cover used by anti-semites.

[Econoline]

[Big RR]

Of course one can oppose the policies of the Israeli government and not be an anti-semite. However it's equally true that being "anti-Israeli policies" is frequently a cover used by anti-semites.

Absolutely; but it's also true that for some on the pro-Israel side, any criticism of Israel eventually is called anti-Semitism (as in item 7 on econo's post).

[Lord Jim]

it's also true that for some on the pro-Israel side, any criticism of Israel eventually is called anti-Semitism

Sure, there are some who do that; and there are also some anti-semites who when called on their expressions of anti-semitism will use the claim, "any criticism of Israel is called anti-semitism"...when that wasn't really what they were doing...

[Lord Jim]

Fairfax apologises and withdraws SMH cartoon criticised as antisemitic



The Sydney Morning Herald has retracted and apologised for publishing a cartoon described by Jewish leaders as racist and admitted it was a serious error of judgment to publish it.

The cartoon, which accompanied a column by Mike Carlton last month, has been removed from the paper’s websites.

The editor of the Herald, Darren Goodsir, originally defended Glen Le Lievre’s drawing about the conflict in Gaza, but in Monday’s newspaper editorial said that his decision had been “too simplistic and ignored the use of religious symbols”.

On Monday, Goodsir told Guardian Australia he had reached the decision “after a long 10 days of serious thinking, and reflection”.

Last week the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies accused Fairfax Media of racial vilification and demanded an apology for the cartoon, which they said was “a grotesque stereotype of a Jew using a remote-control device to blow up houses and people in Gaza”.

Jewish community leaders and many others had written to the Herald to complain about the cartoon and the Australian Jewish News had called for its readers to boycott Fairfax Media’s publications.

“The Herald now appreciates that, in using the Star of David and the kippah in the cartoon, the newspaper invoked an inappropriate element of religion, rather than nationhood, and made a serious error of judgment,” the editorial said.

“It was wrong to publish the cartoon in its original form.

“We apologise unreservedly for this lapse, and the anguish and distress that has been caused.”

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/a ... ntisemitic

[Gob]

Pah!! It reflected actual events....

As the sun begins to sink over the Mediterranean, groups of Israelis gather each evening on hilltops close to the Gaza border to cheer, whoop and whistle as bombs rain down on people in a hellish warzone a few miles away.

Old sofas, garden chairs, battered car seats and upturned crates provide seating for the spectators. On one hilltop, a swing has been attached to the branches of a pine tree, allowing its occupant to sway gently in the breeze. Some bring bottles of beer or soft drinks and snacks.

On Saturday, a group of men huddle around a shisha pipe. Nearly all hold up smartphones to record the explosions or to pose grinning, perhaps with thumbs up, for selfies against a backdrop of black smoke.

Despite reports that millions of Israelis are living in terror of Hamas rockets, they don't deter these hilltop war watchers whose proximity to Gaza puts them within range of the most rudimentary missiles. Some bring their children.


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/j ... za-bombing

I wonder who pulled the strings of the SHM to get that banned.

Cowardly shits at the SMH.

[Lord Jim]

Why not just run the actual photo showing the handful of idiots? Why the need for a Der Stürmer style anti-semitic caricature intended to symbolize Jewish people?

The cartoon was vile, it should never have been run in a "respectable" newspaper, and The Herald did the right thing by apologizing for it.

ETA:

I wonder who pulled the strings of the SHM to get that banned.

Why The Jews of course Strop...everybody knows they control the media...

That's why whenever you turn on coverage of this on cable news, you almost never see a report or video of Palestinian casualties...

[Gob]

I think we all know who it was caricaturing Jim, not any "stereotype".

[Lord Jim]

Are you kidding?

That caricature springs from a long toxic tradition:

[Lord Jim]

Here's another "criticism of Israeli policies"...

This is Osama Hamdan, a top spokesman for Hamas, less than a week ago:

[Gob]

Are you kidding?

Not at all, I took the cartoon to be a direct representation of Benjamin Netanyahu. And why should Jews be exempt from cartoon portrayal?