Trying to wrap my head around what exactly you r trying to say, billmon.
not much success. one of the rare times i don’t get you.
on second thought i can see what u r trying to say but, well… i just think this was a bad example. or not.
/confused

Posted by: holy_bazooka | Nov 4 2006 7:45 utc | 4

What only goes to prove there are unreasonable people on both sides??

Posted by: holy_bazooka | Nov 4 2006 7:49 utc | 6

Speaking of controversial video’s: Yitzhak Rabin Assassination Video Emerges After 11 Years

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 4 2006 8:57 utc | 8

When I get angry at the atrocities committed by USuk in Iraq, the source of my anger isn’t the atrocities per se although that doesn’t help any. The root pool of bile stems from the fact that USuk got no business being there at all.
The same goes for Palestine. The IDF, or any other actualisation of Israeli authority has got no business being anywhere in either Palestine or the lands temporarily called Israel.
Every action committed in the name of the state of Israel is wrong, even if it is just handing out a speeding ticket to a drunken russian waiting his time to get an amerikan visa.
It’s not about whether the women were taking drag to the mosque so the men could get out of Friday prayers alive. Even if that story were true it is irrelevant, by definition every act committed by the IDF is an illegal act of unprovoked aggression.
Splitting hairs over who threw the first punch on a particular day is a distraction from the inherent illegitimacy of the ersatz state of Israel.
It is a mistake to even enter into a debate which attributes any sort of legitimacy to the occupying authority.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 4 2006 10:56 utc | 10

“Nor is it a noble South African style struggle to overthrow a brutal, racist apartheid regime… ”
I do not think even Umkhonto we Sizwe would live up to the standards of noble South African style struggle, what with the bombings and all.

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Nov 4 2006 13:44 utc | 12

what is your point citizen k?
is there anyone here who claims that the US is beyond reproach? are only citizens of some fictious pure as the driven snow utopia allowed to criticize Israel?
the behavior of the cheney admin is despicable, we all know that. does that then make it ok for the IDF to shoot women like they were dogs?
you certainly have low expectations.

Posted by: dan of steele | Nov 4 2006 16:00 utc | 14

Dan of Steele:
My point is the whole concept of “legit” state is moral fraud it stinks of cheap hypocricy – well, my real point is that I’m disgusted and outraged to find myself going along like a good German.
As for all the righteous indignation about israel, its such a compound of deceit and prejudice that it makes one despair. Israel’s actions are worthy of condemnation, but the condemnations are often ridiculous. Look at the usually cogent Noirette’s remark above. “Apartheid walls are anathema in any democracy” – well, that would be good news to Mexicans being pinned behind the Rio Grande or all those Africans who find themselves being kept out of France – and the dark speculations about John Kerry’s dubious jewish roots causing him to change sides – since the man is a rock of consistency and principle otherwise, snort.
BTW, france has a lot of tv stations, algeriene, breton, porn, arab cooking, berber, and so on. A jewish channel is surprising how?
As for the Israelis, they seem bent on re-enacting the collapse of the jewish state in roman tmes – the same mix of zealotry, intercine politics, pointless brutality, and gross misjudgements about geopolitics one sees in Josephus and Talmudic stories. They don’t get a defense from me.

Posted by: citizen k | Nov 4 2006 19:09 utc | 16

I just wish more Americans could look beyond the televised images and the manipulative ways they are used, to see the real character of the conflict, including the bureaucratic, highly unphotogenic savagery of the Israeli strategy for dividing, dominating and, where possible, encouraging the depopulation of the West Bank — a kind of slow-motion ethnic cleansing.
billmon, you chose a round about way to demonstrate your sympathies. a way that allowed israel more benefit of the doubt than i can afford but nonetheless condeming in the gravity of the consequence. still i see your point and agree the distortions on both sides. still the cards are sorely stacked against palestine.
not the kind of conflict that any civilized nation, or even the United States, should be taking sides in
unfortunately this is not a situation where pulling out our support for israel would even the decks. not by a long shot. for the US to come to any kind of nuetral position would be to lend support to balance the outcome, in other words, to make efforts to deter israel, or lend support to factions in palestine that are able to bring stability, at the least combat against starvation and repair infrastructure.
only then could we be percieved as nuetral.

Posted by: annie | Nov 4 2006 19:41 utc | 18

the same mix of zealotry, intercine politics, pointless brutality, and gross misjudgements about geopolitics one sees in Josephus and Talmudic stories. They don’t get a defense from me.
this is what really bothers me. you certainly are not alone at seeing this self destructive behavior. there are however (like Blitzer for example) people in powerful positions who either do not see this or see it and don’t care. what is their motivation?
I have to believe there are many good honest Jews who send money to Israel and also send money to AIPAC. What would it take for them to understand that this is the wrong road? One stereotype of the Jews is that they are shrewd businessmen, is this really a money maker for anyone? As I understand it most of the citizens of Israel are struggling, wealth is concentrated among a small elite much as it is in the US and elsewhere.
Noirette is correct in stating that Israel could not get away with the things it does without the unflinching and unwavering support of the US. It has got to the point where US politicians have to pass an Israel test before they can hold office.
This is not an easy nut to crack, but there has to be a way to stop this downward spiral into totalitarianism…..there just has to be. the alternative is too much for me to fathom.

Posted by: dan of steele | Nov 4 2006 22:07 utc | 20

they promptly head towards to the mosque to see whats up.
i read in one report there was a request over the radio for the women to go to the mosque. we really don’t know the real story of what happens. all we know is the scales are tipped dramatically.

Posted by: annie | Nov 5 2006 0:39 utc | 22

I have to believe there are many good honest Jews who send money to Israel and also send money to AIPAC. What would it take for them to understand that this is the wrong road? One stereotype of the Jews is that they are shrewd businessmen, is this really a money maker for anyone?
Many American Jews who send money to Israel do so under the theory that anti-semitism is a latent force that could flame up anytime anywhere and Israel is a last resort. Since the first part of the theory is undoubtedly true, and the second part is at least arguable, I doubt this will stop soon.
As for Jews being shrewd businessmen, my experience is that stupidity and other qualities are evenly distributed among human populations despite such common prejudices. Why I’ve met black Americans who had no ability to dance, Welshmen who couldn’t sing, and wildly emotional English. One of the odd things about prejudice is that the targets also buy into it, so we have the odd prospect of the jewish neo-con theorists who are convinced that they are intellectual giants despite the difficulty they have with elementary reasoning. Jews have a tradition of valuing and encouraging intellectual accomplishment, but that doesn’t make fools into sages.
US foreign policy is stuffed with unchallengeable truths – when was the last time someone in power suggested we blow off Saudi Arabia or pull military bases out of germany? Some things are not even discussed – like the billions spent fighting a dirty war in Columbia. For obvious reasons, the Israeli/US connection is the subject of more dark musing about “The Lobby” and “dual loyalties” and so on than other peculiar or indefensible aspects of US policy.

Posted by: citizen k | Nov 5 2006 1:39 utc | 24

From today’s Israeli Hebrew daily Ha’aretz:
Listen to Maj. Gen. Stern
By Gideon Levy

A bloodbath is taking place in Beit Hanun, the Israel Defense Forces runs rampant and kills at least 37 people in four days – and Israeli public opinion yawns with indifference. A brigade commander tells his soldiers, who killed 12 people in one day: “You’ve won 12:0,” and the soldiers grin broadly. This is the moral nadir we have reached, following a long slide down a slippery slope: Human life has become cheap.
Proof of this came at the end of the week from the big mouth of Major General Elazar Stern, the head of the IDF Personnel Directorate, who occasionally says true things. “The IDF’s excessive sensitivity to human life led to some of the failures in the Lebanon war – and this should not happen,” Stern told Channel 7. Stern should be praised for these forthright words: Those who embark with unbearable lightness on a futile war of choice cannot allow themselves the luxury of showing sensitivity for the lives of their soldiers. In war, soldiers not only kill, but are also killed. This should have been stated in advance.
But the general’s remarks are also tainted with hypocrisy: Those who over a few months kill more than 1,000 Lebanese and 300 Palestinians for dubious reasons do not have the right to speak about sensitivity to human life. The fact that the public protest against the war did not take off demonstrates that after having lost all sensitivity for the lives of others, we are also gradually losing sensitivity for the lives of our children who are killed in vain. The contempt for human life starts with the lives of Arabs and ends with the lives of Jews.
What a long way we have come since the talk, as hypocritical as it may have been, about “the purity of arms.” This concept has been totally deleted from the lexicon. What a long way we have come since the time when we took pride in the fact that, unlike the Arabs, we tried not to kill innocent civilians. And now we have arrived at the shocking reality of the second Lebanon war. For example, the number of people Israel killed is not only almost 10 times higher than the number of people Hezbollah killed, but the number of soldiers Hezbollah killed is three times higher than the number of Israeli civilians they killed, while the number of Lebanese civilians killed by Israel is about three times the number of Hezbollah fighters. So whose arms are purer? A journalist from The Guardian who is currently in Israel was shocked to hear that these figures have not been the subject of public discussion here.
The current stage of the moral decline began with the targeted assassinations in the territories. When they began, there was still an argument over their legality and justness. Who remembers that the assassinations were once limited, declaratively at least, to “ticking bombs”? The High Court of Justice, in its cowardice, has evaded taking a stance on this issue for years, despite the petitions on its doorstep. And the assassination project grew and expanded until it reached monstrous proportions.
In recent months, almost no day has gone by without Palestinians being killed in Gaza. Instead of asking why, we get a prime minister who boasts to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee about “300 terrorists” dead within four months, as if killing in itself were an enormous achievement. This is the lesson from Ehud Olmert, and it is immeasurably more grievous than all his alleged corruption affairs.
No one asked who these fatalities were, whether they all deserved to die, and what benefit Israel derives from this wholesale killing. Beyond the terrifying number of civilians killed, including dozens of women and children, we should also ask whether every armed person in Gaza – and there are tens of thousands of them – deserves the death penalty, without a trial. The day the IDF began the targeted assassinations, our sensitivity to human life was doomed to be erased.
The IDF has been operating in the town of Beit Hanun for several days now. Operation Autumn Clouds is ostensibly intended to target Qassam launchers, but meanwhile it has only brought more Qassams on Sderot – besides the killing, destruction and terror it sows in the heart of the 30,000-resident town. I was at the Beit Hanun home of the Abu Ouda family twice recently. The first time was when a shell destroyed the family’s home. The second time was when soldiers killed the father, his son and his daughter, who were innocent of any crime. And this was before Operation Autumn Clouds.
And how is the Israeli press covering Autumn Clouds? In Maariv on Thursday, you needed a magnifying glass to find an offhand reference to the killing of 10 Palestinians in one day; it was the same for Yedioth Ahronoth. The two newspapers with the country’s largest circulation demonstrate a disgusting level of dehumanization. The statement by Yedioth Ahronoth’s military commentator, Alex Fishman, that one of the operation’s goals is drilling the troops for the “big operation,” does not stir any protest. That the IDF is embarking on a “training operation” in a dense population center, sowing death and destruction – does this not show a frightening contempt for human life?
The daily killing in Gaza receives scant mention. Futile operations aimed at restoring the IDF’s lost honor do not arouse any debate about their aim, morality or chances of succeeding. No one wonders about the extent of Qassam damage versus the extent of the killing and destruction – including the bombing of the power station – in Gaza, where a million and a half people are encaged, impoverished and hungry.
These futile operations will not stop the Qassams, which are aimed at giving us and the rest of the world a painful reminder of the imprisoned and boycotted Gaza residents’ distress, which no one would notice if it were not for the Qassams. The way to fight the Qassams is to stop the boycott, sit down at the negotiating table and reach an accord. Otherwise, we will continue to slide and become immune to their loss of life, and soon to our loss of life as well. Listen to Major General Stern.

And a few more details, buried deep in another Ha’aretz piece today:

Meanwhile, 30,000 Beit Hanoun residents continue to live under siege  for the fifth day, with short respites. The IDF’s liaison administration is trying to alleviate the civilians’ suffering, but there is no running water in the taps because the IDF’s bulldozers have damaged – perhaps by mistake – main water pipes, and the houses reek of sewage.

Posted by: Bea | Nov 5 2006 19:22 utc | 26

Maybe then they would understand that this not the kind of conflict that any civilized nation, or even the United States, should be taking sides in, much less arming and financing one of the two parties.
Israel vs. its internal or ‘contiguous’ non-Jewish population and its Arab neighbors is a proxy simmering conflict which erupts from time to time (… Lebanon.) It suits everyone except the people on the ground.
Traditionally, USuk supported Israel, after ww 2 etc. Other ‘westerners’ were luke warm. Nothing (much) was ever decided or resolved. I needn’t repeat history here and leave out Suez.
After the oil shocks of the early 70’s the US slowly, groping for a new energy and foreign policy, strengthened ties with and domination, control of, Arab States. These actions, had, amongst others, the effect of removing the natural opposition to Israel, cutting off compromise, negotiation, local arrangements and so forth. The perpetual jockeying of the US for better control of the whole region also lead to the contradiction of them supporting despotic governments and their dissidents – regime change, all that! simultaneously .. Of course the first target was secular Arab nationalism of the socialistic kind. Israel remained the outpost, bought and paid for, to be maintained at all costs, a kind of card held up the sleeve.
The outcome is that the Palestinians have no allies and no recourse.
The conflict – based on the fact that Israel wants land and wants to kill Arabs, to put it succintly – is an attitude USuk needs to maintain – Imagine if Israel said to the West, well eff you, we have had enough of this, we can use the cheap labor -it will be an improvement for them and they won’t complain – and we can do good deals with Syria..!
As a colonial outpost it must toe the line and cannot be independent or go its own way.
Neither the Arabs, nor the Europeans, have the wits or the strength or just the downright courage to unravel this long standing plan, to backtrack, or oppose. Israel will have to be kept both aggressive and nominally triumphant, pandered to and paid for (sub rosa), will have to be indulged and excused (for what many would call slow genocide), as otherwise the whole scheme will collapse.

Posted by: Noirette | Nov 6 2006 19:51 utc | 28