Israel’s ambassador to US ‘justifies bombing hospitals’

 

"Yesterday saw Israel come in for particular criticism after the al-Wafa hospital, which cares for patients suffering from brain and spine trauma, was damaged by the Israeli air offensive.

Asked if Israel “has the right to defend itself by bombing hospitals”, Dermer said: “Actually, if you turn your hospital into a command post & missile launching site you do. But Israel hasn't.

“Israel cares more about Pal civilians in Gaza than Hamas,” he continued. “We try to get them out of harm’s way. They put them in harm's way.”"

--------------------------

Well, at least he is no longer an American.  pl  

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israelgaza-conflict-israels-ambassador-to-us-justifies-bombing-hospitals-in-twitter-q-and-a-9612834.html

 

 

Comments

[Ryan]

Dermer was only an American in the legal sense. He knows which side of a bagel the cream cheese is smeared on. I wish others who believe like him would make the aliyah and leave America. They won't, as they know they serve a vital function as a fifth column.

Mark Regev was asked about hospitals and beaches by Jon Snow in this video. Regev wasn't happy.

http://t.co/ysK7nOknwp

[The beaver]

After NBC, now it is CNN:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/18/cnn-diana-magnay-israel-gaza_n_5598866.html?1405690372

I guess it is becoming a Kafkaesque environment.
The guy in charge at CNN comes from NBC IIRC

Those tourists are not scums, oh no:
“High above a valley in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Israeli tourists have a panoramic view of this strategically important location, which is also known as the Gateway to Damascus. Tour groups, fresh from jaunts to the area’s wineries, cherry markets, and artisanal chocolate shops, stop here by the dozens each day armed with binoculars and cameras, eager for a glimpse of smoke and even carnage.”

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/07/17/how-israeli-pr-sells-gaza-slaughter/#comment-172699

[Matthew]

Col: I'm trying to reconcile "Hamas forced me to machine gun kids playing soccer on the beach" with "only a savage would mistakenly) shoot down a civilian airliner."

[WP]

Ryan,

A stunning conversation. Regev is totally stone-deaf and/or totally irrational. This is a national suicide moment for Israel.

The Israelis cannot save themselves from this.

Obama is the only one who has the power and position to save the Israelis now. The money, arms, intelligence assistance, and banking access need immediately to stop with a unilateral moratorium conditioned on an immediate end to the siege and humanitarian reparations to Gaza.

The wording is sanctions or solution. The choice should be up to Israel, take it or leave it.
There is no other solution. The action must be public, not hidden, and unilaterally imposed by the US, otherwise, Hamas cannot cooperate.

Seventy years is too long now. If ever there were a R2P moment for the US for Israel, this is it.

This is a go to China moment for the President.

Obama has no political risk because he is a lame duck and so hated now anyway. All is upside for him.

Israel's true friends need to support this.

I am not hopeful.

[turcopolier]

WP

Obama wants to be loved by the rich 'liberal' Zionists in Chicago and New York who created him. He wants their money for his library in Chicago and he does not want to be shunned as Carter is shunned. pl

[oofda]

Regarding Regev- he has been an apologist for the GOI for a long time. His credibility is zero- after the four boys were killed on the beach, he said the Isreali military doesn't target children. Right.

In 2010, after the Gaza flotilla raid, Ruth Sunderland of The Observer described Regev as the "spin doctor in chief for the Israeli government" and said that "he is unlikely to win sceptics to Israel's cause".John Pilger described Regev's role as "Israel's chief propagandis

[WP]

I know how Washington works and who makes big contributions with strings attached. That why I am not hopeful. It is such cowardice that prevents a solution here.

A hundred years from now Carter will be viewed very favorably. Obama will not be. It is independence and courage that makes people great.

Since we, here, have no power or access to power except through the keyboard, all we can do is admonish. Perhaps someone important with power is reading and thinking. To that extent, this Committee of Correspondence is important. Thanks for keeping it active.

[WP]

By the way, Carter has beautiful and well-funded library and foundation in Atlanta and receives lots of money from Jewish contributors.

[The beaver]

WP

It ain't going to happen.
Just watch the spin-mistress at Foggy Bottom.
Yep she is in communication but she does not understand plain English:
3/4 way of teh video:
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4503851/state-department-spokesperson-israels-bombing-four-gaza-children

[PeterHug]

OTOH, I expect that President Carter is quite satisfied with where he is, and what he's accomplished so far in his life.

I have immense respect for him, his organizations, and the work he and they have done.

[Denis]

Bombing hospitals is just one element of the GoI genocide initiative.

In the wake of the triple kidnapping/murder but before Khdeir was burned to death, Ayeley Shaked, a member of Knesset, called Israelis to, among other things, kill all of the Palestinians' mothers and demolish their homes -- "otherwise more little snakes will be raised there."

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-lawmakers-call-genocide-palestinians-gets-thousands-facebook-likes

Apologies if this obscenity has already been brought to your attention in another thread.

[Castellio]

There are people with substance, and there are people without substance. It becomes visible eventually.

[Charles Dekle]

Col Lang,
My wife and I voted for him twice. He had the opportunity to be a much better man but choose to do otherwise.

The only vote that I have cast in the last 10 years that was not a disappointment was the one that I cast for Jim Webb.

Thank you,

[Tyler]

Is it anymore national suicide than our politicians declaring that the US is open to anyone who wants to come?

[Ryan]

Neither am I, WP.

I'm afraid Col. Lang is right about Obama. He is like a deer caught in the headlights. Considering the stupid and bad decisions he's made in the past maybe he should sit on his hands with the airliner and Gaza. Ditto that for Kerry.

As far as Israel goes, I believe they may have overreached themselves but good this time. We may be looking at "what goes around, comes around" moment. Regev is the poster boy of what stupidity combined with arrogance can bring forth.

[Alan]

The Israelis seriously think that in the age of the internet they can keep doing the same old with impunity. For them, it's all simply a marketing problem. But in the many years I have participated in online discussions and debates about Israel, I have never seen as many ordinary people disgusted with what is going on. In such circumstances, silence would be golden but Israel's public relations warriors take chutzpah to a whole new level instead with truly unprecedented venom and disregard for human decency. This is another turning point, as was the Lebanon war a few years ago. What can I say, never interrupt someone when he is making a fool of himself:

"Student Union opens ‘hasbara’ room in effort to fill public diplomacy vacuum"

http://www.haaretz.com/advertisement-articles/1.605256

[wisedupearly]

to all, remember that given Obama's background his security/foreign policy decisions are grounded what the briefings tell him. It would be nice to believe that Obama had god-like powers and could throw off the NSA noose but our times are not dire enough, not yet.

[Ex 11B]

Always gotta get your Right wing talking points in, dont you?

Haven't heard anybody say anyrhing like that, except for claims made by rw partisans. But sure, thats right on par with killing kids on the beach in front of a hotel full of international press.
Screaming at a bus full of YMCA kids is kind of embarressing like that, but to the screaming haters credit at least they didn't adjust fire.
BTW...what did your strawman arguement have to do with this thread...exactly?

[WP]

Macho blind man

“Nearly 300 innocent lives were taken -- men, women, children, infants -- who had nothing to do with the crisis in [Gaza] Ukraine. Their deaths are an outrage of unspeakable proportions.”… “No nation should accept rockets [or artillery] being fired into its borders…”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/07/18/statement-president-ukraine

Unless they are Palestinian children a/k/a legal targets.

http://news.yahoo.com/israel-ground-assault-overwhelms-south-gaza-hospital-161244588.html

Yes, unspeakable outrage!

[CTuttle]

Speaking of Dermer, WTF was the WH thinking when they invited him to the Iftar Dinner...?

Obama Humiliates Muslim Guests at White House Ramadan Event, Endorses Israel’s Gaza Assault and NSA Surveillance

http://www.alternet.org/world/obama-humiliates-muslim-white-house-guests-endorsing-israels-gaza-assault-defending-nsa?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

[JerseyJeffersonian]

More from the world's most moral army:

www.commondreams.org/view/2014/07/15-2

Maim 'em first, & if that doesn't kill 'em, maybe the cancer will.

[Former11B]

This was supposed to be a reply to Tyler. Otherwise I look like a babbling idiot. Which might be the case but context matters.

[Fred]

The beaver,

to paraphrase the reporter at minute 8: If rockets didn't get fired from the beachfront why is the IDF attacking the beach? The state department: "I still don't understand your question"

The whole thing clearly shows that Palestinians don't count as people to all those Ivy League educated staffers. See minute 7:00 through the end of the clip.

[Thomas]

Everyone has the power, it is called moral courage.

Many fail.

[mistah charley, ph.d.]

With regard to Ron Dermer, biographical sketches mention his first wife, Adi Blumberg, daughter of the chairman of the Bank of Jerusalem. She died tragically in 2000, 18 months after the wedding, but I can find no information about the specifics. There is, however, a hint in the eulogy by the rabbi who performed her wedding, Rabbi Adin Even-Yisrael Steinsaltz :

"Adi was a daughter, a sister, and a wife – these are the stages of life that all people experience. But she was also a special individual grappling with a unique and difficult problem. On the one hand Adi, in different ways and with great intensity – sometimes even tragically – dealt with the issue of the divide between what is beautiful and what is sacred, what Kierkegaard called the conflict between the aesthetic and the ethical, what in beautiful Hebrew poetry is referred to as “The Deer and Justice” (i.e. beauty and justice), with the deer representing beauty and justice to be understood as the foundation for ethics.

"To a certain extent, the difficulties Adi faced dealt with her awareness that these two worlds co-exist, albeit not always in harmony with each other. Adi was immersed in the aesthetic world not only in a personal sense, or from a humane aspect, but institutionally as well. The world of the school of art, of which I spoke with her at great length, was oftentimes a frightening place for her, because of the distance between that world and the conception or the understanding – and therefore the identification – of a concept like sanctity or purity. I am not referring here to the personal aspects involved but rather a Weltanschauung." [end of quote from Rabbi Steinsaltz]

Another eulogy quoted at the website of Adi's memorial foundation is from Avram Burg, Speaker of the Knesset from 1999 to 2003, whose Wikipedia article indicates he is an Israeli able to take a more objective perspective - for example, the last paragraph there says,

"In early December 2013 he confirmed the existence of Israel's nuclear weapons during a speech at a conference aimed at de-nuclearising the Middle East. He stated that national policy of neither confirming or denying the existence of such weapons was 'outdated and childish'. In response, The Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, an Israeli political group, demanded an investigation into his statements, deeming the content as treasonous." [end of quote from Wikipedia]

To me, it seems that Avram Burg is a perceptive and reasonable man. Were I a Jew, I would make a point of reading his book, The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise From its Ashes (2008). Of Adi, Burg said, "If art represents limitless, infinite freedom, then Judaism, in contrast to art, is a world defined by its borders, the fences it erects, what it labels as forbidden. The limitations are such that men and women within its confines are not free, other than those whose sole focus is Torah study. And Adi’s greatest quandary was, how do I combine this apparently unlimited freedom with the built-in restraint? How will I connect the artist within me to the Jew within me? And how will I nourish them both within this vessel that is me without the vessel blowing up and bursting apart? ... I was privileged to meet Adi, in that brief interlude of twilight, between the act of always creating and the state of infinite joy. When we would briefly meet on the street, I could see in her smile, her expression, her words, an aesthetic genius and someone who, at a certain point, was not content with small accomplishments like creating jewelry, for example, which lacks the insight necessary to envision an encompassing panorama of the world. I saw in her a sad person, who in her sadness searched for optimism, and refused to surrender and hide behind melancholia." [end of quote from Avrum Burg]

May the Creative Forces of the Universe have mercy on our souls, if any.