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

[Lord Jim]

Not at all, I took the cartoon to be a direct representation of Benjamin Netanyahu.

My guess is that you may be the only person on the planet earth who saw it that way...

The character doesn't look the slightest bit like Netanyahu, (well, he's wearing glasses and you found a picture of Netanyau wearing glasses, but he generally doesn't wear them in public; glasses are certainly not a part of his public image)

And here's Netanyahu in profile:



You'll note the complete absence of a hook nose...

On the other hand, that caricature is a 100% dead ringer for 1000s of anti-Semitic caricatures published for over 100 years...

[Grim Reaper]

Well, the Israelis seemed to have learned something from the Nazis:

Israeli official calls for concentration camps in Gaza

Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, Moshe Feiglin, has called for the use of concentration camps for the “conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters.”

Sharing a plan for the destruction of Gaza in a letter addressed to Netanyahu on his Facebook page on August 1, Feiglin wrote “What is required now is that we internalize the fact that Oslo is finished, that this is our country – our country exclusively, including Gaza.”

Feiglin's comments come after one of his far-right Knesset colleagues Ayelet Shaked previously called for the mothers of Hamas members to be targeted.

In his letter, Feiglin urged Netanyahu to “turn Gaza into Jaffa, a flourishing Israeli city with a minimum number of hostile civilians,” in reference to a Palestinian coastal city that was ethnically cleansed by in 1948 and incorporated into present-day Israel.

He called for tent encampments where the Palestinian civilian population would be “concentrated” to be established along the Sinai border until relevant emigration destinations are determined, adding that the supply of electricity and water to the formerly populated areas will be disconnected while they are “shelled with maximum fire power” in order to destroy the civilian and military infrastructure of Hamas as well as its means of communication and of logistics.

“Those who insist on staying, if they can be proven to have no affiliation with Hamas, will be required to publicly sign a declaration of loyalty to Israel, and receive a blue ID card similar to that of the Arabs of East Jerusalem,” he said.

Feiglin, who in January blasted Netanyahu for allowing his son to date a non-Jew, or a 'Gentile', also caused uproar among Palestinians when he participated in a raid on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site, in East Jerusalem in March.

The death toll since Israel began pounding the Gaza Strip on July 7 has reached 1821, including at least 401 children, 238 women and 74 elders, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

At least 64 Israeli soldiers have also been killed in battles with Palestinian fighters and three civilians in rocket attacks.

[Gob]

Ah well, we'll have to agree to disagree then Jim. Even if it was a stereotype of a Jew, I still don't see why they should be exempt from caricature.

[Econoline]

I agree with Jim; the cartoon was definitely a stock anti-Semitic caricature of the generic "fat, rich Jew". Perhaps if the figure really had been drawn to be recognizable as Netanyahu, it wouldn't have been quite as offensive.

Even if it was a stereotype of a Jew, I still don't see why they should be exempt from caricature.

Umm...perhaps because of history: the history of the Jews (quite different from the history of the U.S. or Wales), the history of anti-Semitism, and the history of precisely that sort of caricature.

[Gob]

I'm sorry, but that doesn't get people these days a pass on being caricatured.

[Econoline]

Grim Reaper: Godwin's Law! You lose!!!

OTOH...It certainly seems like what the Israelis have constructed in the past 10-15 years could rightly be called apartheid. (Or segregation, or ségrégation, or Geschlechtentrennung, or הפרדה, or....no: "apartheid" is exactly the right word.)

[...]The change has taken place over the past 10 to 15 years because it was widely felt that mixing caused trouble and the two peoples needed to be separated if they were ever to live side by side. A result, however, has been a heightened dehumanization that has allowed the murder of four teenagers to escalate in just a few days into a series of devastating Israeli airstrikes that have killed scores and Palestinian rocket attacks that have displaced thousands.

During the 1980s and ’90s, tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip worked in Israel. They learned Hebrew and built relations with their Israeli employers. They watched Israeli television (there was little else available), and many developed a cautious but unmistakable admiration for Israeli politics and public accountability. When Palestinians talked of building a state, it was not uncommon to hear members of their elite refer to Israel as a model. They witnessed the robust (sometimes brutal) nature of public discourse in Israel, and many liked what they saw.

In turn, Israelis would venture on weekends into the West Bank, where they would get their cars fixed, shop for vegetables and snack on plates of unparalleled hummus. They attended weddings of their Palestinian employees and their children. Some Israelis and Palestinians even went into business together.

The relationship between the two peoples was hardly that of equals. It had a colonial quality not unlike that along much of the American border with Mexico. But when the guy repairing your balcony did not show up for work because of a closure of the West Bank and could not earn his pay, his deprivation meant something to you, as an Israeli. You knew him; you trusted him; you knew about his family. And when you, a Palestinian worker, saw your Israeli employer’s mother growing ill, you understood his anguish. You knew the woman; you liked her.

[...]Israelis — especially in the heartland around Tel Aviv, where two-thirds of the country lives — can now go weeks without laying eyes on a Palestinian or ever having to think about one. In Gaza, Israelis do not exist except in a kind of collective nightmare. In the West Bank, the Israelis are mostly settlers and soldiers. Apart from a few pockets of industry and shopping where Palestinians are employed, interaction is highly limited.

[...]The relationship between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas is one of mutual loathing, according to Martin S. Indyk, who resigned last month as American envoy for peace negotiations after nine months of futile efforts. The two sides and their leaders have become total strangers. Each vilifies the other and imagines its own people to be morally superior, forced to defend itself against the cruel predations of the other.

A generation ago, there were plenty of causes for tension and concern. But Palestinians building what they hoped would become their state, and Israelis working with them, had an often moving sense of shared purpose. Some discovered that they liked one another and looked forward to working together. Today, those feelings are virtually dead. And while mixing the populations in those years was no panacea, divorcing them has only made things worse.

(Read the whole article here.)

[Grim Reaper]

And because the poor Israelis need a hand out, we're giving them $225 million to buy more missiles for their missile defense system.

[Guinevere]

Jim and Econo have this one dead to rights . . . that comic is anti-Semitic, and it does matter.

[Gob]

Amazing. That comic got more response here than Israel's bombing of a school.

[Gob]

Resignations in the UK government

Baroness Warsi, the senior Foreign Office minister, has announced her resignation from the Government over Britain's policy on Gaza, saying it is "morally indefensible".



Writing on Twitter, she said: "With deep regret I have this morning written to the Prime Minister & tendered my resignation. I can no longer support Govt policy on #Gaza".

In her resignation letter presented to the Prime Minister Lady Warsi said the British response to the crisis in Gaza will have a long term "detrimental impact on our reputation internationally and domestically"

She appeared to suggest that Britain's support for Israel could encourage extremism in the UK. Home Office evidence suggested that Britain's response to the Gaza crisis risked "becoming a basis for radicalisation [that] could have consequences for us for years to come", she wrote.

The letter indicates Lady Warsi's wider disgruntlement at the way David Cameron runs his administration.

She wrote: “For some weeks, in meetings and discussions, I have been open and honest about my views on the conflict in Gaza and response to it.

“My view has been that our policy in relation to the Middle East Peace Process generally but more recently our approach and language during the current crisis in Gaza is morally indefensible, is not in Britain’s national interest and will have a long term detrimental impact on our reputation internationally and domestically."

She also suggested the Israeli government should face international trial for alleged war crimes, but feared the British Government would not support that position.

She wrote in the letter: “Particularly as the Minister with responsibility for the United Nations, The International Criminal Court and Human Rights, I believe our approach in relation to the current conflict is neither consistent with our values, specifically our commitment to the rule of law and our long history of support for international justice."

Speaking afterwards, she told the Huffington Post website: "As the minister for the International Criminal Court, I’ve spent the last two and a half years helping to promote, support and fund the ICC. I felt I could not reconcile this with our continued pressure on the Palestinian leadership not to turn to the ICC to seek justice."

[Crackpot]

Amazing. That comic got more response here than Israel's bombing of a school.

Cry me a river. Could it be that one of them doesn't even allow for being something other than a deliberate action?

[Gob]

One was a cartoon, mocking a non specific person for watching in comfort and celebrating in the deaths of others.

The other?

The UN expressed outrage after another deadly Israeli strike near one of its schools in the southern city of Rafah killed at least 10 people, in the third such incident in 10 days.

Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, strongly condemned Sunday's shelling, calling it "a moral outrage and a criminal act."

"This madness must stop," he said.

Israel's military confirmed it fired on a target near the UN school drawing a chorus of condemnation.

"The IDF [army] targeted three PIJ (Islamic Jihad) terrorists on board a motorcycle in the vicinity of an UNRWA school in Rafah," an army statement said on Sunday, referring to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

"The IDF is reviewing the consequences of this strike" near the school where around 3,000 Palestinians were sheltering, it said.

The strike on the school came as Palestinian factions gathered for truce talks with Egypt in Cairo and world powers voiced increasingly urgent calls for the warring sides to lay down their weapons.

"The bloodshed needs to stop," said a statement signed by the European Union and the European Commission presidents on behalf of the bloc's 28 member states.

"We deplore the terrible loss of lives, including innocent women and children," it said, condemning the "intolerable violence" being suffered by Gaza residents.

[Crackpot]

You're whining worse than you did than when You posted that article about rock climbing with you latest infant accessory

[Crackpot]

BTW civilians have been acting as spectators in wars as long as there has been wars to watch. It's just fallen out of fashion over the past century not because of any great moral accomplishment but the almost complete elimination of "safe" areas to watch from.

[Gob]

So we should ignore it?

Last Wednesday night, as he stood on a hilltop outside the Israeli town of Sderot and watched the bombardment of Gaza on the plain below, a Danish newspaper reporter snapped an iPhone photo of about a dozen locals who cheered on their military from plastic chairs while eating popcorn.

Allan Sorensen, a veteran Middle East correspondent for Denmark’s Kristeligt Dagblad, then uploaded the image to Twitter with a sardonic caption that described the macabre scene as “Sderot cinema.”

The image of the Israeli spectators was taken after 9 p.m. local time on Wednesday, the reporter said, about the same time that what was intended to be a “precision strike” from Israel’s military killed at least eight of their Palestinian neighbors, seated in similar plastic chairs at a beachside cafe in Gaza, waiting to watch the World Cup semifinal between Argentina and the Netherlands.

As his image reverberated around the social network, where it was shared more than 10,000 times, the reporter was surprised by the response. It was, he said in a telephone interview from Israel, “nothing new.” Similar scenes, of Israeli spectators gathered on the high ground above Gaza to view the destruction below, were documented in a Times of London article and a video report from Denmark’s TV2 during Operation Cast Lead in 2009.

[Crackpot]

As opposed to drawing an a cartoon demonizing a people because some of them are exhibiting a behavior that a certain segment of the population the world over would do/does when conditions allow?

Yeah in that case ignoring it would probably the better option.

[Lord Jim]

BTW civilians have been acting as spectators in wars as long as there has been wars to watch.

That is quite true; it was certainly true at First Manassas:

Near Centreville, Capt. John Tidball witnessed a “throng of sightseers” approach his battery. “They came in all manner of ways, some in stylish carriages, others in city hacks, and still others in buggies, on horseback and even on foot. Apparently everything in the shape of vehicles in and around Washington had been pressed into service for the occasion. It was Sunday and everybody seemed to have taken a general holiday; that is all the male population, for I saw none of the other sex there, except a few huckster women who had driven out in carts loaded with pies and other edibles. All manner of people were represented in this crowd, from the most grave and noble senators to hotel waiters.”

London Times correspondent William Howard Russell observed, “On the hill beside me there was a crowd of civilians on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, with a few of the fairer, if not gentler sex .... The spectators were all excited, and a lady with an opera glass who was near me was quite beside herself when an unusually heavy discharge roused the current of her blood —‘That is splendid, Oh my! Is not that first rate? I guess we will be in Richmond to-morrow.’ Irritated by constant appeals to borrow his glass, Russell decided to press forward after an officer rode up and exclaimed to the cheering crowd, “We have whipped them on all points.”

http://www.civilwar.org/hallowed-ground ... ry-at.html

One was a cartoon,mocking a non specific person for representing a long time anti-Semitic stereo-type designed to demonize and whip up hatred watching in comfort and celebrating in the deaths of others.

Fixed.

I would like to associate myself entirely with the comments made in this exchange by The Honorable Gentleman From Michigan...

[liberty]

There will not be anything resembling peace in Gaza as long Hamas is in power there. Those that respond to Hamas' propaganda are complicit in the deaths of Palestinian civilians that Hamas has sacrificed. Their condemnation of Israel encourages Hamas to sacrifice even more.

[Lord Jim]

And now we have Hamas agreeing to the same cease fire terms they rejected three weeks ago:

JERUSALEM — As a 72-hour cease-fire mediated by Egypt took hold on Tuesday, Gazans emerged to view a shattered landscape with Hamas still in power, while Israel began to debate the politics, costs and accomplishments of the monthlong war.

Israel announced the withdrawal of all its forces from the Gaza Strip and both sides said they would engage in talks on a lasting arrangement to keep the peace. But the negotiations, also to be mediated by Egypt, are bound to be tricky; and given the participants’ antagonisms and sharply different goals, the cease-fire could still collapse. Israeli officials emphasized that their army, navy and air force remain deployed near the coastal territory, primed to respond to any attacks from Gaza.

Since the conflict began in earnest on July 8, Gaza officials say, more than 1,830 Palestinians have died, most of them civilians, with more of the dead likely to emerge as the rubble is cleared away. Israel says 64 of its soldiers and three civilians have been killed.

But people on both sides are already wondering if the death and destruction was worth what is essentially another standoff between Israel and Hamas, the militant Islamic group that governs Gaza, and its ally Islamic Jihad, with no clear victor or vanquished. The cease-fire proposal accepted late Monday night is essentially the same one that was rejected by Hamas three weeks ago, before the Israelis moved into Gaza with ground troops, and on its face it resolves little.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/world ... .html?_r=0

As I've said, in the larger picture, the Israelis have certainly made mistakes...

First among them is the continued construction of settlements in The West Bank; the Israeli government should really have done a lot more to strengthen the hand of those like Abbas who want to reach an agreement, and demonstrate a tangible benefit to the Palestinians for pursuing a peaceful negotiated path...

But that's a discussion for another day...

As far as this most recent conflict is concerned, those who truly have the blood of those killed and injured on their hands are Osama "The Jews Used The Blood Of Christian Children To Make Their Matzos" Hamdan and his murderous Hamas cohorts...

These criminals began the conflict by firing rockets indiscriminately against Israeli civilian population centers, could have ended it at any time by ceasing their attacks, refused to accept or honor repeated cease fire proposals, (that the Israelis accepted) and worst of all, deliberately used their own civilian population as human shield cannon fodder in a cynical and cold-hearted attempt to shift the blame from themselves through the heart-wrenching images this created in the media...

Apparently that strategy succeeded with some; it sure didn't with me...

[Gob]

This will cheer you up Jim...

Former President Jimmy Carter reprimanded Israel for heavy handed attacks on Gaza today and called for the creation of a Palestinian state.

The one-term U.S. president and former Ireland President Mary Robinson said today in a joint op-ed on ForeignPolicy.com that 'there is no humane or legal justification' for the way Israel has 'pulverized large parts of Gaza, including thousands of homes, schools, and hospitals.'

'This is a humanitarian catastrophe,' the former world leaders wrote, pointing out that more than 250,000 Gaza residents have been displaced from their homes and many others no longer have working water and electricity.

'There is never an excuse for deliberate attacks on civilians in conflict. These are war crimes,' the duo stated. 'This is true for both sides. Hamas's indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians is equally unacceptable.'

Israel carries more blame for the current humanitarian situation, however, because only three of the 65 Israelis who have been killed by Hamas were citizens, Carter and Robinson argue. On the other hand, most of the 1,600 Palestinians who died in Israel's attacks on Gaza were civilians and at least 330 were children. The Palestinian government says the total number of deaths suffered by its population since the fighting ratcheted up has now climbed to 1,834.

'The need for international judicial proceedings to investigate and end these violations of international law should be taken very seriously,' they said.

A long term resolution to the conflict has to include the authorization of a Palestinian state, the former politicians advocated in their op-ed titled 'How to Fix It.' But first the United States and European Union 'should recognize that Hamas is not just a military but also a political force.'

'Hamas cannot be wished away, nor will it cooperate in its own demise. Only by recognizing its legitimacy as a political actor -- one that represents a substantial portion of the Palestinian people -- can the West begin to provide the right incentives for Hamas to lay down its weapons,' they claim.

Carter and Robinson said Israel must also lift sanctions on Gaza and remove a blockade that prevents goods and people from easily getting in and out of Gaza.