Before and After in Gaza

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2710868/Razing-Gaza-Before-satellite-images-true-devastation-Israels-bombardment-700-homes-mosques-turned-rubble-400-craters-blight-war-zone.html#ixzz390DE3UJZ

This requires no comment.  It reminds me of street scenes in Frankfurt am Main when I lived there as a child just after WW2.  And we are giving the IDF more bombs?  How can we pretend to be seeking a cease-fire when we are doing that?  pl

Comments

[Matthew]

I believe Andrew Sullivan has called it an "epidemic of not watching.” See, e.g., http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2011/08/05/an-epidemic-of-not-watching-ctd-2/

Why? For background, please see the good Professor Walt: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-m-walt/aipac-americas-israel-policy_b_5607883.html

[Cee]

I just read a report about the babies that are being treated in the hospitals. They are numbered because nobody knows who they are, where they lived (houses gone) and the parents are probably dead.

Damn Israel.

[samuelburke]

Col, what do you think it will take for the U.S to hold Israel more accountable as a client state? Wag the Dog...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-FXkj-r9Mc

[Harper]

The New York Times reported this morning that some leading Gulf Arab states are showing their true colors, by sitting silently and giving tacit support to the Israeli operations. Times noted that some Arab states see Hamas as a greater danger than Israel and are therefore giving defacto support to the Israeli operations. Some Middle East blogs have reported that there is tight coordination between Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel on the ongoing Gaza operations. One site, Middle East Eye, says that Prince Bandar bin-Sultan is the key Saudi liaison to Israel, "advising" on extending the operations. I guess this is the Saudi-Israeli deal that Cheney was brokering back in the 2006 when he made his secret trip to Saudi--arranged by Bandar who was still Ambassador in Washington at the time.

[zanzibar]

Unfortunately US policy epitomizes hypocrisy and incoherence.

Monty Python would have done an excellent parody. Tragic consequences indeed for all the families caught in the violence!

When a society has no morality.....

[oofda]

Even Joe Scarborough, who normally is a shill for Israel, calls the IDF's actions in Gaza "indiscriminate killing." Perhaps attitudes are changing. He also notes the negative effect this is having on the US.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/joe-scarborough-israel-indiscriminate-killing

[Andrew]

Palestine, America is your enemy!

[Matthew]

Col: At a certain point, nobody wants to be labeled "a Good German." See http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/joe-scarborough-israel-indiscriminate-killing

[Jonathan House]

perhaps the one of the only appropriate comments, this from a UN spokesman

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/gaza/11001631/UN-spokesman-breaks-down-talking-about-Gaza-child-deaths.html

[Tigershark]

Why is agriculture being razed? No power, water or food and the people will vote Hamas out? Does Bibi really think that?

[David Habakkuk]

All,

A note on the 'Mail.'

This is very much an old-style popular newspaper. It is not, like the Murdoch 'Sun', run by dessicated manipulative cynics, who despise their readers and probably also themselves, but by old-style journalists who operate to a large extent out of gut instinct – on the basis of a generally, if not universally, accurate confidence that their own sense of things meshes with that of their readers and they in some sense speak for these.

As such, the views one finds on the 'Mail Online' site – and indeed the incoherences in these views – commonly both reflect and mould those of a large section of 'Middle England.'

The paper, and the website, are also both extremely professionally produced – and those editing them are fully aware of the emotive power of images.

Accordingly, the publication of these images says something about the effect that Israel's enthusiasm for 'mowing the grass' has had on opinion here.

So also do the comments, which are clearly polarised, but with the balance of opinion unambiguously coming down against Israel. So the 'best-rated' comment reads:

'Israel is evil. Complete overreaction with utterly murderous intention and no thought for civilian casualties. Netanyahu belongs in the Hague.'

As of this writing, it has 1014 positive ratings, and 386 negative ones.

Both anti-Israel and pro-Israel comments show the same pattern – opinion is divided and polarised, but the preponderance of 'Middle England' would appear to have been coming round to the view that the Israelis are a bunch of thugs.

[FDixon]

Are giving Israel more bombs?
No, No we are 'selling' then.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/07/u-s-has-sold-ammunition-to-israel-since-start-of-gaza-conflict/

On July 20 Israel made a foreign military sales request for munitions that included an undisclosed amount of 120 mm mortar rounds and 40 mm ammunition for grenade launchers. The defense official said the ammunition was sold to Israel as a “routine” foreign military sales request and not an emergency request to tap into the U.S. military stockpile in Israel.

[Tunde]

LTG Flynn has spoken at the Aspen Sec. Forum in which he has cast doubt on Israel's long-term strategic aims (ie a subjugated, compliant settlement. I don't believe the Israeli securocracy wants to create a living ghetto. They realize the moral implications that would mean to the state of Israel.)

[jonst]

Nixon was once reputed to have said, 'if we lose Peoria we are done'..or words close to that. If--and it is still a big if in my mind anyway-- but if Scarborough is, at least, edging closer to the exit, Israel is in trouble.

[turcopolier]

FDixon

Yes, they buy munitions from us with money we give them. pl

[Andrew]

On the barbarian in the shiny suit... "Punishing Palestinians for existing has a long history. It was Israel’s policy before Hamas and its rudimentary rockets were Israel’s boogeyman of the moment, and before Israel turned Gaza into an open-air prison, punching bag, and weapons laboratory. In 1948, Israel killed thousands of innocents, and terrorized and displaced hundreds of thousands more, in the name of creating a Jewish-majority state in a land that was then sixty-five per cent Arab. In 1967, it displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians again, occupying territory that it still largely controls, forty-seven years later." by RASHID KHALIDI
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/collective-punishment-gaza

In the below article we discover the delightful fascists among us in Canada...of course they are accompanied by the dangerously hapless Dominionists for effect.

"On Saturday at Queen’s Park (the grounds of the Ontario legislature) I was shoved, spat on, had my bike damaged and lock stolen by members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a hate group that is banned in the U.S. and Israel. My offence was to chant “kill more Palestinian children” as hundreds of JDL and B’nai B’rith supporters rallied to applaud the onslaught on Gaza in a counter demonstration to those opposed to Israel’s massacres."

"...While one might want to believe that the warmongering promoted by dominant Jewish organizations is not widely shared by the community they claim to represent, I’ve seen too many sizable pro-war rallies and witnessed too many outbursts of anti-Arab racism over the past three weeks in Toronto to be hopeful in this regard. Wide swaths of Toronto’s Jewish community seem to be mimicking the Israeli public’s racist militarism. (Google stories about Israelis chanting “death to the Arabs”, celebrating military blasts on Gaza from hilltops nearby or beating peace activists.) On Bloor Street two weeks ago a middle-aged man walking with his partner crumbled a leaflet I handed him, pointed at two older Arab looking men who responded, and yelled “barbarians”. In a similarly bizarre racist outburst, a man who was biking past the Saturday demonstration stopped to engage and soon after he was pointing at a young Arab looking child close by and telling me that I was indoctrinating him to kill. And then on Sunday an older woman interrupted a phone conversation I was having about Israel’s destruction of Gaza and yelled she hoped Israel kills “10,000 more”.
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/influence-jewish-community.html

As for all those enjoying the mayhem and dead babies... who knows maybe one day they'll have us all play the role of Palestinian, even you Highlander.

[Charles Dekle]

Col Lang,

Back in the early 90s I designed a test set for the Israeli AH-64s. As you stated the money came from US Army product support funds for the helicopter if I remember correctly. Of course it was technically an Israeli contract but I knew better. Back then I was a head down engineer glad for the work but I often wondered if it would have been more cost effective to just give them the equipment and eliminate the middle people raking in the cash.

Cheney was the SECDEF then. He initiated cuts before Desert Storm that eventually got me laid off because evidently we "won" the Cold War. However, the money continued to flow to Israel.

Regards,

[Sylvia]

Israeli play expelled from Edinburgh venue as Scots protest against Gaza attack

Read the link: http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/sarah-irving/israeli-play-expelled-edinburgh-venue-scots-protest-against-gaza-attack

------

One small step …

[The Beaver]

Harper

From the Angry Arab:
"To say that the Arab" nations" are silent on Gaza is another attempt by the Zionist pandering media to justify Israeli aggresion and to say that Hamas is an extremist "terrorist" group and the Arabs hate them anyway so the world should be upset with Hamas and not Israel. "

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2014/07/arab-nations-silent-on-gaza.html

[The Beaver]

Colonel

In case you didn't see this:
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/israel-us-aid-hamas-harry-reid-109452.html

“We should not give the Israeli people the minimum amount of aid and then cross our fingers and hope it all works out in the future,” Reid said. “We can do better and need to go further in protecting Israel.”

Yep, helping the israelis killing women and children is more important than helping the American taxpayers

[Jose]

Bombing of the power plant was not a mistake, the loss of electricity reduces the availability of photogenic dead on the internet.

[FB Ali]

I see that Conservative backbenchers are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the UK government's stance. When a "former defence minister" describes the Israeli actions as "disproportionate... unforgiveable and deliberate", then opinion has indeed shifted in the UK.

And, why should it not? After all, wherever human beings live, this should be the natural reaction - unless they are either totally brainwashed or converted into zombies by constantly feeding on TV pap. As unfortunately seems to be the case with large segments of the US population.

[Peter Brownlee]

"As Netanyahu’s own words show [...] Israel will accept nothing short of the acquiescence of Palestinians to their own subordination. It will accept only a Palestinian 'state' that is stripped of all the attributes of a real state: control over security, borders, airspace, maritime limits, contiguity, and, therefore, sovereignty. The twenty-three-year charade of the 'peace process' has shown that this is all Israel is offering, with the full approval of Washington. Whenever the Palestinians have resisted that pathetic fate (as any nation would), Israel has punished them for their insolence. This is not new."

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/collective-punishment-gaza?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=facebook&mbid=social_facebook

[Castellio]

I think the term genocide should be used.

A very important article is the following: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/describe-slaughter-genocide.html

[Castellio]

The polarization is not all one way. Those celebrating the tragedies in Gaza are many, and they are organized and organizing.

To read about a very real presence in the Toronto Jewish community, go to: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/influence-jewish-community.html

It is the same in Montreal and Vancouver as well. I imagine it is true throughout American cities.