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

[Lord Jim]

I'm no big fan of Netanyahu's, but it seems to me he bent over backwards to try and avoid this...

Israel PM says ground offensive in Gaza under way

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he has instructed the military there to begin a ground offensive in Gaza.

Tweets by the Israel Defence Forces also confirmed a large ground operation in the Gaza Strip.

"A new phase of Operation Protective Edge has begun," it said.

The new phase follows 10 days of Hamas attacks on Israel by land, air & sea - and repeated rejections of offers to de-escalate the situation."

Three Palestinian children were killed earlier today after an Israeli aircraft bombed a house in Gaza City.

Another two youngsters are said to have died in a separate attack.

Gaza health officials say at least 229 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and among them over 40 children have been killed so far in the conflict.

In Israel, one civilian has been killed by fire from Gaza, where the Israeli military says more than 1,300 rockets have been launched into the Jewish state. [no country on earth would permit a situation like this to continue.]

The latest deaths came after a five-hour ceasefire requested by the United Nations.

An Israeli official said earlier that senior Israeli negotiators in Cairo had approved a full truce, but a final decision lay with the security cabinet.

A Hamas spokesman denied that a full truce was slated to start at 6am tomorrow.

The military said rockets headed toward Tel Aviv, the southern city of Beersheba and Ashkelon. There were no reports of casualties or damage.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0717/631268-gaza-israel/

[Econoline]

...if I had to explain the whole thing briefly, I would use the following metaphor: we’ve built two giant prisons. Let’s call them “West Bank Prison” and “Gaza Prison.” The West Bank Prison is similar to a minimum security facility, where prisoners get to run their own affairs as long as they behave. They are entitled to vacations from time to time and once a year they are even taken to the beach. Some lucky people get below-minimum-wage jobs in nearby factories, and when you consider the low prices in the prison canteen, it’s actually not a bad deal.

Gaza, on the other hand, is a maximum security facility. It is difficult to visit and impossible to leave. We allow in essential food, water and electricity so that the prisoners don’t die. Apart from that, we don’t really care about them – that is unless they approach the prison fence; or the “forbidden” perimeter, where anyone who wanders too close is shot; or if they try to throw something over the fence.

Indeed, they occasionally throw some homemade bombs made of things they’ve managed to smuggle into prison, and when they fall on our heads it really is unpleasant. So we send our snipers to the watchtowers built around the prison and shoot them like fish in a barrel until they calm down. And when they finally do calm down, we cease firing because we are not the kind of bastards who shoot people for fun.

In the last five years, the minimum security prison has been pretty calm, but there have been some riots in the maximum security one, which we have managed to control with the usual routine. Still, even when both facilities were calm, we obviously didn’t open the prison doors. Rather, we made the walls higher and decreased the size of the prison yard; after all, we needed some of it for ourselves.

When we are asked why don’t we free the prisoners we explain that they refused to sign their parole papers because they don’t like our terms. For example, they don’t like that the release will be gradual, lasting 10 years or more, or that they will have to allow us to keep all kinds of items that we took from them when they were first locked up.

In addition, the head of prison intelligence compiled a report, which unequivocally states that every prisoner, each and every one of them, hates the prison guards. And as long as that is the case there is really nothing to discuss as far as we are concerned.

The prison facilities now hold a total of 3.5 million people – an entire nation – all sentenced to life. Under such conditions, prisoners can turn to desperate measures, such as suicide missions, digging long tunnels or swimming miles and storming our tanks with their old rifles. Often it ends up with a killing that looks like it was taken from some old video game. On the rare occasions that they do kill one of the guards, they hold celebrations in the prison and we become even more sickened by them. This, of course, also causes us to fear the day that they find a way to break down the walls.

I believe the prisoners will never love those who have locked them up, but there is a good chance that their children might be able to forgive – if for no other reason than a desire to move on with their lives. Naturally, there is only one way for this healing process to begin, and it has nothing to do with the fish and the barrel approach.

Hold your fire. Tear down the prison walls. Set the prisoners free.

source

(Originally posted in Hebrew at http://mekomit.co.il/מדוע-אני-מתנגד-למבצע-בעזה-גם-כשיורים-על/)

[Long Run]

File that under an alternate reality world view. The best defense that can be provided of the general population of Palestine is that they are pawns in the Arab MOTU efforts to marginalize and destabilize Israel.

[Lord Jim]

I'd say more like:

they are pawns in the Arab MOTU efforts to deflect the attention of their populations from their own corruption and incompetence .

They've been long suffering exploited pawns for that purpose since 1948...

I don't think they honestly believe they can seriously destabilize Israel...

[Big RR]

I don't think they honestly believe they can seriously destabilize Israel...

Militarily? No. but in world opinion (ad even in the opinion of many Israeli citizens and other jews who traditionally supported Israel, it may well succeed. Like it or not, Israel comes off as the bully, killing young children, dispossessing people from their homes, having parallel justice standards for Israelis and Palestinians, and their reputation worldwide suffers. The big guy hitting the little guy in the bar invariably comes off as the bully, regardless of that the little guy did to provoke him.

[Econoline]

File that under an alternate reality world view.

If you'd followed my link to the source, you'd have found out that the author of that essay, Noam Sheizaf, is a native Israeli, born in Ramat-Gan and living and working today in Tel Aviv, and that before working as a journalist, he served four and a half years in the IDF. In the beginning of the essay (which I didn't quote) he starts out

Even today, when rockets are exploding above the city I love most in the world, even when we rush into our apartment building’s stairwell and march downstairs along with the neighbors to the bicycle room that has been turned into a makeshift bomb shelter. Even now, I oppose this military operation wholeheartedly. The sight of the IAF’s attack helicopters crossing the sky, going south along the Tel Aviv coastline does not fill me with pride or gratitude – it horrifies and depresses me.

As Americans, your (and my and Jim's) world views are more "alternate reality" than his.

[Long Run]

No, I got that this was an Israeli. As the missiles from Palestine keep trying to kill him and his countrymen, I doubt there are more than a few there who agree with his view. The sentiment of sadness that this is what is happening is understandable and widely shared. Assigning the reason for the current situation -- where Palestinians are openly trying to kill Israelis, encouraging Israel to respond and using the general population as a shield/sacrifices against Israeli self-defense -- to a view that Israel is holding millions of Palestinians in "jail" is the opposite of objective journalism and definitely off the bizarre horizon.

[Econoline]

He seems to have a pretty good grasp of reality--perhaps better than those who listen to only one side of the Israeli political argument. (And BTW, he specifically stated that the "prison" metaphor was a metaphor.)

Even after operations such as Defensive Shield, Summer Rains, Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense and the Second Lebanon War, I still cannot get used to the unshakable consensus that takes hold of the Israeli public. I would still like to believe that this whole thing is a misunderstanding, and that if my own people would only give some more thought to the reality in the occupied territories, they would change their mind overnight. I want to believe that they don’t fully grasp the nature of the occupation, which is why they are so enraged by whatever the Palestinians do. This mindset leads to yet another violent Israeli response, which only paves the way for the next escalation. I do not know if this line of thinking is more naïve or more patronizing on my part, but what other explanations are there?

I keep running into Israelis who don’t know, for example, that we still control Allenby Bridge (which connects the West Bank to Jordan), and with it each entrance and exit of a every Palestinian into the West Bank; or they don’t know that the IDF still operates in Area A, supposedly under the full control of the Palestinian Authority; or that there is no 3G network in the West Bank because Israel doesn’t permit the Palestinian cellular providers to use the necessary frequencies; or that we imprison of Palestinians hundreds without trial for months and years; or any other factual, undeniable aspect of the occupation. If all this is unknown, then perhaps this is all just a big misunderstanding.

And from another essay:

Bibi may seem restrained in times of war when compared to leaders like Ariel Sharon (the first Lebanon War), Shimon Peres (Lebanon, 1996) and perhaps Ehud Olmert (Lebanon 2007, Gaza 2008), as all three believed that one can re-shape geopolitical realities through military campaigns. Netanyahu is a little more suspicious of this theory, which is one of his positive qualities. Yet the dead bodies he is leaving behind are beginning to pile up, and frustration over the army’s failure to stop the rockets in the current campaign result in carrying out terrible ideas, such as forcing 100,000 people out of their homes, or moving from using guided missiles to field artillery in this heavily populated area. Fish in a barrel have nowhere to run to; neither do civilians in Gaza. It’s enough for one Israeli bomb to fall on a crowd of those new refugees in order for a moral and political catastrophe to take place. In fact, this is already taking place.

[Lord Jim]

If you'd followed my link to the source, you'd have found out that the author of that essay, Noam Sheizaf, is a native Israeli,

I don't see how that changes anything....

It's a rather facile analogy lacking in key elements no matter who constructed it....

One of the primary explanations for the imbalance in casualty rates between the Israelis and the Palestinians overall, (and the fundamental explanation for the imbalance in casualties in the current conflict) is the asymmetry with which both sides approach the conflict...

The Israeli forces view the protection of their civilian population as their whole raison d'Art ; their military might exists for the whole purpose of accomplishing this objective...

Hamas views the situation quite differently and their strategy reflects that...

Hamas views deaths among the civilian population under it's control as a weapon in it's fight against the Israelis...

They see the deaths of their own people caused by their nihilistic approach as a "public relations" tool to achieve what they see as a "greater good"...

And they see that tool as one of the strongest weapons in their rather pathetic arsenal...

Militarily? No. but in world opinion ...

Like it or not, Israel comes off as the bully, killing young children, dispossessing people from their homes....

As I said before I'm no fan of Benjamin Netanyahu's, but he was spot on when he made this rather glib observation about the asymmetry of the conflict, (especially as it applies to the current situation...):

"We use our missiles to protect our people; Hamas uses their people to protect their missiles"...

[Econoline]

Another "alternate reality world view," from HaAretz:

Gaza vs. Israel: The never-ending rematch
I do not for one moment doubt Israel’s right to self-defense. But this isn't the first time Israel has pounded Hamas, and judging by the record, more destruction in Gaza won’t bring Israel more security.
By Emily L. Hauser | Jul. 10, 2014 | 5:41 PM

Targeting enemy civilians is a war crime. Let’s not entertain any doubt about that. Hamas and other Palestinian militants have targeted Israeli civilians with rockets for years; the fact that these rockets are crude and their aim poor doesn’t mitigate the simple fact: Targeting civilians is a war crime.

Trying to determine who “started” our current state of conflict is not quite so simple, though, unless we accept ideology as fact. For some Jews, the Palestinians started it by refusing to accept our nationalism as ascendant to theirs; for some Palestinians, the Jews started it, in precisely the same way.

If, however, we’re trying to uncover a chain of discrete events leading to the seemingly permanent state of war between Israel and Gaza, the waters are muddy. Did the latest round of rockets come in response to an IDF incursion, or the other way around? Did it start when Israel neutralized a terrorist infiltrator, or was that terrorist a farmer trying to gather crops? Both sides play into the provocation-response cycle, each conveniently forgetting that actions have consequences, often beyond those we first imagined.

Each society brings to this process its own dysfunctions, as well, picking and choosing which events support which narrative, often to paradoxical ends. Israel’s paradoxical storyline goes something like this: We control the West Bank, and Gaza’s borders and airspace, but only because we have no choice, because we’re victims facing annihilation, but/and our military (which we love and are very proud of because it’s the region’s most powerful) can be trusted to pound our enemies (armed with crude rockets and a shattered society, but that goes into the “forgetfulness” file) into submission. Just let the IDF win - t’nu l’Tzahal lenatzeah!

As problematic as any of our cognitive inconsistencies might be (and I can only assume Palestinian society has its own), the biggest discrepancy appears to be all but invisible: The IDF has, actually, been pounding Hamas for some time, and oh hey, look – here we are again.

Let’s go to the tape:

Israel officially withdrew from Gaza nine years ago; the following months saw both rockets and air strikes. On June 24, 2006, Israeli forces entered southern Gaza and kidnapped two suspected Hamas members from their homes. Hamas retaliated the next day with a cross-border raid in which two soldiers were killed, and Gilad Shalit captured.

Israel then launched Operation Summer Rains. Prime Minister Olmert was clear about the operation’s goals: “to release the kidnapped soldier and eliminate terror.” In the course of hostilities, the IDF seized 64 Hamas-linked Palestinian officials, flattened Gaza’s power plant, razed several bridges, and by October, had killed 256 Palestinians, including 60 children. Two Israeli soldiers were also killed, and 31 civilians injured.

In the winter of 2008/2009, we saw Operation Cast Lead. A six-month ceasefire had expired, rockets were launched, and Israel slammed full force into the Strip. In eight days of air attacks, 400 Palestinians and four Israelis were killed; then came the ground invasion. Rockets continued to fly, if eventually at a lesser pace, and by January 18, 2009, some 1,300 Palestinians were dead and 5,100 injured; 13 Israelis had been killed, 80 injured. CNN reported that 22,000 of Gaza’s buildings had been destroyed, along with 80 percent of its crops, and quoted an IDF officer on the war’s goals: “To improve the security situation in southern Israel…the answer was to hit Hamas hard…in order to prevent them [from] firing rockets that target our civilian population.”

Cut to November 2012. After four more years of tit-for-tat rockets and airstrikes, Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defense. A senior Israeli official had recently acknowledged that most rockets were not being launched by Hamas, but Defense Minister Barak was uncompromising: The IDF’s goals were “strengthening deterrence, damaging the rocket arsenal, damaging and hurting Hamas and minimizing injury to the civilians on the home front.” Over the next week, 167 Palestinians were killed (at least 87 noncombatants), along with four Israeli civilians and two Israeli soldiers. More than 380 residential properties were destroyed, and the Strip’s agricultural sector sustained $20 million in losses.

Between each of these major events there were of course other air strikes, other rockets, more damage to Israel’s own property, more frightened Israeli babies. And here we are. Again.

I have lived under missile attack, and I have family under attack in the south right now. I do not for one moment doubt Israel’s right to self-defense.

But even if we set aside the damage and forget the dead, if we remain incurious about the impact both might have on our enemy’s will to compromise – even if all we consider is sheer efficacy – how can we look at this history and believe that repeating past failures will keep the Jewish State safe?

Are you safe now?

Sometimes, it's unfair to say "both sides are at fault"...but this is not one of those times.

[Lord Jim]

In the 10 days prior to the ground incursion, Hamas fired 1500 rockets into Israel...

300 into Tel Aviv...(They didn't kill anyone because in this arms race, the Israeli "Iron Dome" anti-missile defense system performed brilliantly, and out matched the better longer range missiles Hamas was able to acquire...If Hamas had the kind of Buk Missile system that was used by the thugs in Ukraine, it would have easily penetrated the "Iron Dome" defense system... )

But despite the fact that they were unsuccessful at killing people, (though certainly not for want of trying) these rocket attacks represented a substantial terror weapon...

They completely disrupted the lives of the people, and threatened the economy of the country..

Imagine what it would be like, if in some major metropolitan area in the US (say The Bay Area or Los Angeles or New York), pretty much every hour day and night, for 10 days, everyone had to head for an air raid shelter...everybody leaves their cars on the freeway, every person working in a high rise heads for the basement, every store stops doing business; every court adjourns, the whole place comes to a halt...

Every hour for days on end...

It's pretty much impossible to imagine what that would be like (it seems surreal) but that's the reality that millions of Israeli's were dealing with...

Imagine how long we'd put up with it, if someone our border was doing that ...before we laid the hammer down...

10 seconds? Maybe if we were really patient 15?

Certainly not 10 days...

ETA:

Do you think our reaction would be, "oh well, they haven't managed to kill many people yet, so we might as well just put up with it"...

If even one missile was fired at us from our borders we'd scramble a squadron of F-16s and turn the site the missile was fired from into a fine powder...

[Econoline]

But even if we set aside the damage and forget the dead, if we remain incurious about the impact both might have on our enemy’s will to compromise – even if all we consider is sheer efficacy – how can we look at this history and believe that repeating past failures will keep the Jewish State safe?

P.S.

Imagine how long we'd put up with it, if someone our border was doing that ...before we laid the hammer down...

10 seconds? Maybe if we were really patient 15?

Certainly not 10 days...

Yeah, that's pretty hard to imagine...it would be even harder to imagine 87 people per day getting KILLED by the onslaught, and yet doing nothing about it...

(BTW, I've personally met Israelis who can't imagine living in the danger of a typical American city.)

[Big RR]

It's pretty much impossible to imagine what that would be like (it seems surreal) but that's the reality that millions of Israeli's were dealing with...

Imagine how long we'd put up with it, if someone our border was doing that ...before we laid the hammer down...

10 seconds? Maybe if we were really patient 15?

You make a good point re the immediate situation, but there is a broader question--how do we prevent this from occurring again and again in the future; and the answer (IMHO) is not to disenfranchise the Palestinians further and continue to treat them as less than human, which only spurs the same back toward Israel in return. An accord has to be reached, unless Israel plans to exterminate all the Palestinians (which is something too horrible to believe); force rarely solves anything, although it can keep the status quo for a little while. Both sides have to engage and negotiate a settlement or this will go one for years.

[Gob]

At least five people have been killed and 70 injured by an Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza, Palestinians say.

The Israeli military said it had targeted a cache of anti-tank missiles in the hospital's "immediate vicinity".

Overnight, more than 30 members of two Palestinian families died in Israeli strikes, Gazan health officials said.

On Monday evening Israel said seven of its soldiers had been killed in the past 24 hours, bringing the number of Israeli military dead to 25.

Two Israeli civilians have also died in the recent violence.

The Palestinian death toll from the two-week conflict has now passed 550, the majority of them civilians, according to Gaza's health ministry. The UN says more than 100,000 Gazans have now been displaced.

[Econoline]

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results."

Hamas and the current Israeli government are both certifiably insane.

[Lord Jim]

How many more innocent Palestinian children and other civillians would be alive today, if Hamas had agreed to the Egyptian offered Ceasefire (that Israel agreed to) five days ago, before the incursion?

All that was required to end this, was for Hamas to stop firing rockets at Israel...

If that had happened a week ago, or two weeks ago, there would be a lot fewer dead Palestinians...

[Econoline]

True. But Bibi and the hard-liners seem to know exactly which buttons to push to provoke the inevitable rockets--and because Hamas is incompetent, and the Israeli missile defense is extremely competent, it seems like they don't mind pushing those buttons whenever they feel the (political) need to do so.

I stand by my previous comment: Hamas and the current Israeli government are both certifiably insane.

[Sue U]

Hamas and the current Israeli government are both certifiably insane.

Nothing to disagree with there.

[Big RR]

Have to agree.

[Guinevere]

Was listening to the Israeli government spokesperson on the BBC this morning and he made some of the points LJ makes above: (1) no other nation would take rockets being fired at them without a response; (2) Hamas needs to stop using its citizens as human shields and the world needs be more outspoken about that; (3) Israel is consistently held to a higher standard of behavior than other nations when it comes to military action.

I have to agree with all three points.