History did not begin with the Qassams (Amira Hass)

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"History did not begin with the Qassam rockets. But for us, the Israelis, history always begins when the Palestinians hurt us, and then the pain is completely decontextualized. We think that if we cause the Palestinians much greater pain, they will finally learn their lesson. Some term this "achievement."

Nevertheless, the "lesson" remains abstract for most Israelis. The Israeli media prescribes a strict low-information, low-truth diet for its consumers, one rich in generals and their ilk. It is modest, and does not boast of our achievements: the slain children and the bodies rotting under the ruins, the wounded who bleed to death because our soldiers shoot at the ambulance crews, the little girls whose legs were amputated due to horrible wounds caused by various types of weaponry, the devastated fathers shedding bitter tears, the residential neighborhoods that have been obliterated, the terrible burns caused by white phosphorus, and the mini-transfer - the tens of thousands of people who have been expelled from their homes, and are still being expelled at this very minute, ordered to cram into a built-up area that is constantly growing smaller and is also under sentence of incessant bombing and shelling.

Ever since the Palestinian Authority was established, the Israeli public relations machinery has exaggerated the danger of the military threat that the Palestinians pose to us. When they moved from stones to rifles and from Molotov cocktails to suicide bombings, from roadside bombs to Qassams and from Qassams to Grads, and from the PLO to Hamas, we said with a whoop of victory, "We told you. They're anti-Semites." And therefore, we have the right to go on a rampage.

What enabled Israel's military rampage - the proper words to describe it cannot be found in my dictionary - was the step-by-step isolation of the Gaza Strip. The isolation turned Gaza's residents into abstract objects, with no names and addresses, except the addresses of the armed men, and no history, aside from the dates determined by the Shin Bet security service."

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[Scurrilous]

1. Grieving Over Gaza (Anat Biletzki)

<snip>

"I write as an Israeli.

In the past two-and-a-half weeks Israeli forces have killed over 900 people in Gaza; Palestinian rockets have killed four Israelis and Palestinian fighters have killed six soldiers. As the assault began, Bibi Netanyahu, the leader of Israel's definitive right-wing party, Likud, said that talk of comparative numbers is not pertinent to the validity of Operation Cast Lead. That might be true, but the grotesque proportions of one to one hundred in counting the dead should give us pause, should make us reflect on the mantras of the conventional wisdom.

We are told by the mainstream media that Hamas broke the half-year truce agreed upon in June and refused to extend it past the December expiration date. Whether or not the truce was adhered to in its first four months is a question of interpretation rather than fact. Israelis will tell you that the Palestinians did, in fact, launch some Qassam missiles into Israel. True. Palestinians will tell you that Israel did not, in fact, live up to its side of the bargain and continued, even intensified, the siege of Gaza, stopping the electricity, water, fuel, food and medicines crucial for decent survival. True again. But no one denies that on November 4 Israel carried out an incursion into Gaza, killing seven Palestinians and setting off the renewal of violence--Qassam launchings into Israel by Hamas and Israeli killings of Palestinians in Gaza--that was in full swing by the time the truce expired.

We are also led to believe that Hamas refused to extend the half-year cease-fire. But even the mainstream news in the ten days before the attack started clearly reported that Hamas's positions just before the expiration date were vague and divided; and that starting on December 21 it made several overtures to Israel, via Egypt and Turkey, to discuss and consider continuing the truce. Israel refused.

Then we are urged by most conventional media, buttressed by "experts" on Israel, that no nation on earth would tolerate the rocketing of its civilians. That might be true. But such legal posturing, deriving from supposed expertise in the laws of war, seems to forget that the option of going to war, not to mention bombing indiscriminately from on high, is prescribed as a last resort after all other alternatives have been tried and exhausted. Refusing to engage with Hamas, Israel has, instead, put Gaza under blockade. To quote Michael Walzer, who taught us long ago about just and unjust wars--siege is the oldest form of total war.

As to indiscriminate bombing and shelling, we are fed the constant diet of "collateral damage," as if killing of civilians (now estimated as most of the dead, with over half being women and children) can be so effortlessly explained or excused. So, on the one hand, Israel is touted as having amazingly sophisticated methods of targeting while, on the other, it is facilely pardoned for missing the targets. The adage of collateral damage goes a long way--as long as sixteen people, most of them women and children, dying when one Hamas leader is targeted and killed; or forty people seeking shelter in a UN school. And note: in order to count as a bona fide civilian, in order not to be a legitimate target, a person living in Gaza mustn't be in the police force, in a university, in a mosque, or in a hospital run by the Gazan authorities. So indiscriminate is Operation Cast Lead that several Israeli human rights groups and organizations have mounted a wide campaign, crying "Civilians Are Not Cannon Fodder." Neither in Gaza nor in Israel. But that impartiality between Gaza and Israel brings us back to comparing the numbers. Over 900 people, out of a population of 1.5 million, have been killed in Gaza. That is equivalent to 180,000 Americans being killed--in two weeks.

Walzer himself has recently, in The New Republic, accused those using the proportionality argument of incautious lack of judgment. Yet some of those using that argument are Israelis demonstrating, arm in arm with Palestinians, against the carnage. Contrary to what one hears in the mainstream media, which adopts the conventional wisdom pitting all critiques of Israel as venomously pro-Palestinian--in Israel even as a fifth column--these are Israelis (and Jews) who know the unconventional facts. They are marginalized in the current Israeli ecstasy of battle; and ignored by the mainstream media.

I write as an Israeli. Some of us, as Israelis, are grieving over what we have become. Blaming the other side with a roster of rehearsed clichés cannot mitigate the grief."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090126/biletzki?rel=hp_currently

[Scurrilous]

2. Gideon Levy / The IDF has no mercy for the children in Gaza nursery schools

<snip>

"The fighting in Gaza is "war deluxe." Compared with previous wars, it is child's play - pilots bombing unimpeded as if on practice runs, tank and artillery soldiers shelling houses and civilians from their armored vehicles, combat engineering troops destroying entire streets in their ominous protected vehicles without facing serious opposition. A large, broad army is fighting against a helpless population and a weak, ragged organization that has fled the conflict zones and is barely putting up a fight. All this must be said openly, before we begin exulting in our heroism and victory.

This war is also child's play because of its victims. About a third of those killed in Gaza have been children - 311, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, 270 according to the B'Tselem human rights group - out of the 1,000 total killed as of Wednesday. Around 1,550 of the 4,500 wounded have also been children according to figures from the UN, which says the number of children killed has tripled since the ground operation began.

This is too large a proportion by any humanitarian or ethical standard.

It is enough to look at the pictures coming from Shifa Hospital to see how many burned, bleeding and dying children now lie there. History has seen innumerable brutal wars take countless lives.

But the horrifying proportion of this war, a third of the dead being children, has not been seen in recent memory.

God does not show mercy on the children at Gaza's nursery schools, and neither does the Israel Defense Forces. That's how it goes when war is waged in such a densely populated area with a population so blessed with children. About half of Gaza's residents are under 15.

No pilot or soldier went to war to kill children. Not one among them intended to kill children, but it also seems neither did they intend not to kill them. They went to war after the IDF had already killed 952 Palestinian children and adolescents since May 2000.

The public's shocking indifference to these figures is incomprehensible. A thousand propagandists and apologists cannot excuse this criminal killing. One can blame Hamas for the death of children, but no reasonable person in the world will buy these ludicrous, flawed propagandistic goods in light of the pictures and statistics coming from Gaza."

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[coruscate]

7. I wish I could recommend threads

Seriously, all of these you're posting deserve it. A little tired of people trying to hide what they really mean when they accuse people talking about how bad it is of being "hateful."

[coruscate]

3. You find really good articles

And a wide mix of them. I can see why you attach some inside your messages, you'd bload the I/P room if you didn't.

[Scurrilous]

4. Thanks.

:thumbsup:

[ProgressiveMuslim]

5. Must reading! Please send this to your representatives! nt

[ProgressiveMuslim]

6. "...during these dark days, Israel is proving that 1948 never ended."

Well said, Amira.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

8. kick.

[Scurrilous]

9. A lefty in Israel

Sharon Dolev
14.01.09

Please allow me to steal a few minutes of your time, and share my feelings.

In the last few days, a small group has been demonstrating in the entrance of an Air Force base in Tel Aviv. The reason we stand there is that this is the place most air force fighters use to fly to their bases around Israel.

We hold signs calling on them to refuse orders to bomb civilians and children. This is one of many demonstrations against the war held by Israelis and taking place on a daily basis.

This very quiet vigil provokes very strong feelings among passers-by, the military, and the fire brigade across the street. The fire brigade, even though they are not allowed to express political opinions while on duty, threw eggs at us and, when we didn`t move, brought forward their fire engines, with cranes and tried to wash us away.

Since I happened to be on the edge of the vigil, they managed to use one hose to isolate me, and the other to get me soaked wet. When they decided I can`t get any wetter, they kept only the hose they used to separate me from the group, and came together, all in uniform, with their commanding officer, to rip my sign, and to tell me again and again, that I need to get inside the station and (my apologies) give them all head (oral sex).

The under-cover police were there. We kept calling the police asking them to send someone, and they did nothing.

We, at the more extreme left in Israel, always knew that we are, for some, fair game. That we, as they put it so nicely, `should be killed even before the Hammas`. Violence was always part of the response to our activities, but violence by the fire brigades, with the police refusing to act, is a new escalation.

We will continue our demonstrations, and we truly believe in what we do. But at the same time, we know that we are not effective. We are not effective because the media refuses to cover us.

The media in Israel refuses to cover us because it would harm the soldiers` morale, and because, at times of war, we put democracy on hold and our `brave` media becomes drafted media.

But what about the media outside Israel? After all, they are all so interested in Israel. Why don`t they ever show us? Is it because it is too hard to show that not all is just black and white? Is it because it might not go well with the quite fair anti-Israel motions?

I know. My feelings, my disappointment, my fear, are nothing in comparison to the fear of the people, the families and the children in Gaza. They are also nothing in comparison to the people living in Sderot and in the south of Israel.

But today, I am afraid.

In my country, I`m a traitor. Fair game. But the minute I leave Israel, I`m an Israeli. Not a lefty. An Israeli, an occupier, and again – fair game.

And my last point is that there can be a million demonstrations around the world against Israel. That won`t make Israel listen. But a million demonstrations for Peace and full coverage of what we do here in Israel will keep us safer, and might make a difference.

Please, if you know reporters, if you have connections, ask media people to start showing Israeli opposition to the war. It is time our voice is heard.

If you demonstrate, please do it in a way that will make a difference. Not just anti-Israel, but with signs calling for a cease fire and the acceptance of UN resolution 1860 by both sides.

Thank you for listening.

Peace,
Sharon
Please circulate this mail if appropriate.

--
Sharon Dolev
Mobile: [phone]
Home: 04-6360625
Fax: [phone]
[e-mail]

http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=31332

[DogPoundPup]

10. the sad truth written here...thanks for posting SEE Israel's "Colonies" Anna Baltzer VIDEO HERE

Extracts of A Witness in Palestine, written by Anna Baltzer. Anna Baltzer, a young Jewish American, went to the West Bank to discover the realities of daily life for Palestinians under the occupation. What she found would change her outlook on the conflict forever. She wrote this book to give voice to the stories of the people who welcomed her with open arms as their lives crumbled around them. For five months, Baltzer lived and worked with farmers, Palestinian and Israeli activists, and the families of political prisoners, traveling with them across endless checkpoints and roadblocks to reach hospitals, universities, and olive groves. Baltzer witnessed firsthand the environmental devastation brought on by expanding settlements and outposts and the destruction wrought by Israels Security Fence, which separates many families from each other, their communities, their land, and basic human services. What emerges from Baltzers journal is not a sensationalist tale of suicide bombers and conspiracies, but a compelling and inspiring description of the trials of daily life under the occupation. Anna Baltzer is a Jewish American graduate of Columbia University, Fulbright scholar, and two-time volunteer with the International Womens Peace Service in the West Bank, where she documented human rights abuses and supported the nonviolent resistance movement to the occupation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rCBJjCiLGc