Gaza burns and the American media is mute
It is now 12:38PM NZDT and Israel has been attacking Gaza since last night. A Wikipedia article already up. The aggression from Israel began at 9:30am UTC/GMT, so it has been well over half a day now. And in my inbox from the Washington Post and the NY Times - the biggest American newspapers that have sent me email alerts on obscure Americans dying, and results from Baseball matches and NY City council politics and everything you can imagine - have sent to me precisely nothing in regard to Israel's attack on Gaza. Nothing. When terrorists attacked Mumbai it was email alerts all over the place, but the terrorists - killing hundreds - are not muslims they are Jews so we have no coverage, no alerts. It's not newsworthy according to the Americans.
It's not happening according to the Americans. They are disgusting, they are dishonest, they are in cahoots with the Zionists and it's so obvious.The Israelis can only get away with it, or indeed initiate this attack in the first place, because America allows it. The US not only makes it a feasible proposition with their military hardware, but makes it politically/diplomatically sustainable for the Jewish State to wage a constant war of land-grabbing and internal destabilisation against the would-be Arab state with which they are supposedly trying to find a peace because the Americans have successfully manipulated or neutralised Israel's neighbours and the UN.
The US administration is strangled by the Jewish/Israeli lobby, but also complicit in protecting and abetting Israel is the American media - strangled by the same Jewish/Israeli lobby. Their silence provides every bit of evidence necessary to conclude that the American press is anti-Palestinian and pro-Zionist. Their silence is their shame.
It is difficult not to hate upon America and to curse them and wish them ill fortune when the inhumanity and destruction they cause is met with approval from their civil society.
posted by Tim Selwyn @ 12:37 pm
21 comments
21 Comments:
Yeah I was also appalled they didn't report on the 300+ rockets and mortar shells fired into Israel in the last four days immediately following Hamas declaring the cease fire is over.
And how many did those rockets kill? 200? I heard a report saying 1.
Why do the Palestinians continue to fire rockets?
On the face of it, the weakest nation in the World firing rockets at one of the strongest would seem to be the action of madmen. So why do it?
For decades, Israel’s policy has been to subsidize immigrants to go settle in occupied territory. This is called “creating facts on the ground” and is a War Crime under the Geneva Convention - see:
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/boyle.html
It has been going on for a long time:
“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu’a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”
-Moshe Dayan, April 1969.
Palestinians have only one way to slow this process down and that is to counter the Israeli Government’s subsidies and incentives by making settlement appear to be a hazardous enterprise. Hence the rockets. Long-term observers will note that whenever a truce or concession is granted by Israel, the pace of settlement goes up. In this way, Israel uses settlers as an instrument of War.
Rightly or wrongly, Palestinians do not see settlers as innocent civilians, they see them as complicit in a War Crime.
If Hamas had come to the table and engaged in talks to extend the cease fire instead of beginning attacks on Israel there would have been no casualties on either side.
Only 15 of the reported 228 casualties have been civilian deaths so 1:15 is a pretty fair ratio imo especially since Hamas was the initiator.
"Only 15 of the reported 228 casualties have been civilian deaths so 1:15 is a pretty fair ratio imo especially since Hamas was the initiator."
This calculation is only made possible by classifying Politicians and police non-civilians.
"If Hamas had come to the table and engaged in talks"
Another Hamas Peace Plan Ignored
by Ira Chernus
If you want to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a nutshell, just look at the New York Times editorial pages of November 1, 2006. Amazingly enough, the Times ran a full op-ed column by a top official of the Hamas party, Ahmed Yousef, a senior adviser to Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyeh. Yousef repeated the same offer Hamas has been making for years. In Arabic it’s called a “hudna.”
As Yousef explained, a hudna is “a period of nonwar but only partial resolution of a conflict.” It “extends beyond the Western concept of a cease-fire and obliges the parties to use the period to seek a permanent, nonviolent resolution to their differences.” A hudna “affords the opportunity to humanize one’s opponents and understand their position with the goal of resolving the intertribal or international dispute.”
“This offer of hudna is no ruse, as some assert, to strengthen our military machine,” Yousef pleaded. And he offered several reasons to believe it: “A hudna is recognized in Islamic jurisprudence as a legitimate and binding contract. . It goes back to the Koran itself. . When Hamas gives its word to an international agreement, it does so in the name of God and will therefore keep its word. Hamas has honored its previous cease-fires, as Israelis grudgingly note with the oft-heard words, ‘At least with Hamas they mean what they say.’”
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1104-26.htm
Hamas is not in a position to offer a hudna with conditions such as complete withdrawl from all territories annexed during the Six Day War and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
So basically hamas, being weak as shit wants to get shit they cant gain through strength by chipping away slowly through the world opinion court.
I remember when someone last did this, i think it was a guy called Hitler just before world war 2, but of course, the arabs 'deserve' everything because 'they were there once upon a time', whereas the germans in cheq didnt warrant german disolving their country.
So PC
Anon 1:47pm, let's avoid Nazi parallels here esp. such specious ones.
One of the most common mistakes made in regards to this conflict is to conflate Palestinian with Arab. The Palestinians are a unique people with their own culture, religions, dress and cherished traditions. They have about as much in common with their Arab neighbours as does an Englishman with a Scandinavian.
This conflict is about the ethnic cleansing of a unarmed majority from their country of birth by a heavily armed minority whose avowed intention is a State based on race and devoid of it's indigenous people.
"Yeah I was also appalled they didn't report on the 300+ rockets and mortar shells fired into Israel in the last four days immediately following Hamas declaring the cease fire is over".
I was also appalled at how there was no mention of how Israel continued to violate the terms of the ceasefire agreement with numerous attacks. Hamas itself announced the reason why it had to end is because Israel never followed through with it to begin with. That was a week ago. (don't believe me, read Haaretz, Electronic Intifada).
Ali Abuminah of Electronic Intifada makes a valid observation here; he points out the terms of the ceasefire are disgustingly unfair to Palestinians: "What the media never question is Israel's idea of a truce.It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce,Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israelstarves them, kills them and continues to violentlycolonize their land. Israel has not only banned food andmedicine to sustain Palestinian bodies in Gaza but it isalso intent on starving minds: due to the blockade, thereis not even ink, paper and glue to print textbooks forschoolchildren"
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10055.shtml
Tim, so far there's been no Israelis killed from what i've read. A couple injured though. But the point remains: Within the context of a 2 year siege, a humiliating ceasefire agreement described above in which Israel continues to violate anyway; and the continued settlement growth on Palestinian land in the West Bank-- Palestinians have every right to resist and this right is supported by international law.
-AF
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html?_r=1
"the public has grown anxious and angry over the rocket fire, which while causing no recent deaths and few injuries is deeply disturbing for those living near Gaza."
The one person that got killed by a rocket was from ones set off in response to the Israeli attack. So the rockets argument is bullshit - certainly in terms of the response it is total bullshit.
"Later on, about a dozen rockets and mortar bombs were fired from Gaza into Israel. One accidentally struck a northern Gaza house killing two Palestinian sisters, aged five and 13, and wounding a third."
Love it.
The creation of Israel inside Palestine would have to be the dumbest decision of the 20th century.
Jesus Bomber, you're absolutely correct. A few hours ago I checked one of the American blogs I subscribe to. There was nothing about this story so I decided to post it. I did a search for a suitable news story to link to and there was nothing in the American press. Not one story. I wonder if it has anything to do with this from the Wiki link:
"Haaretz reported that Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni "instructed senior ministry officials to open an aggressive and diplomatic international public relations campaign"
Interestingly enough, the story I linked to from the Times had feedback. The first ten or so comments were classic Israeli troll crap. Looks like they were primed and ready to go. The Wiki thing also looks a bit too slick.
The TV 3 coverage of the strikes on Gaza were one sided pro israeli propaganda crap.
Brewerstroupe:
Jesus Tim, you're absolutely correct.
The NY Times article in the daily email just delivered in the last hour is the same one they had earlier in the day (that wasn't emailed because the NY Times does not consider anything that has happened in Gaza over the last 24 hours to be worthy of a news alert). They are just sweeping this Israeli state terrorism under the carpet. Disgusting.
The reason for that is that the NYT is waiting for the Israeli's to write the articles for them!
My apologies for the incorrect attribution. I must admit to being a little upset by this outrage.
This operation has been in the planning for six months which puts the lie to any who maintain it is in retaliation for rockets.
The cease-fire, which Hamas has honoured, despite numerous Israeli breaches, began six months ago.
Israel appears to have abandoned all pretext to obeying international law. Having, since 1948, been in breach of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, (persons displaced during armed conflict must be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased), this action is a flagrant breach of Article 32, (A protected person/s shall not have anything done to them of such a character as to cause physical suffering or extermination ), 33, (No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed.)
I am at a loss in trying to fathom why even our press is taking a pro- Israel stance on this. The Herald articles are calling the victims "militants". Given that the first target was a passing out parade of newly trained policemen, this is a deliberate deceit.
"It is difficult not to hate upon America and to curse them and wish them ill fortune when the inhumanity and destruction they cause is met with approval from their civil society."
Only if you're full of hate already
I don't think anything is wrong with Israel planning a counter-offensive 6 months in advance when sure enough as soon as the ceasefire lapsed Hamas began launching rockets and mortar shells into Israel.
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