The Mullahs down here are having a field day, and quite justifiably. I really don’t understand Americans any more.
The pictures on Al Jazeera are heart-rending, as is CNN’s pregnant silence and refusal to televise the carnage. CNN even went so far just now as to give “the Israeli view” that Hamas “could have been reponsible!!! Al Jazeera tore into Israeli spokesman “Goebbels”-Regev, and it was the first time I saw him stutter. He’s never interrupted or cross-examined on CNN.
Well done U.S.A., well done Israel. Keep up the good work. You’ve just created another xxx million terrorists and anti-Americans. Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush must be relieved that their own war crimes are being pushed into the background.
The sorry facts are that Israel broke the cease-fire, Israel by its own admission persuaded the U.S.A. to abstain rather than approve the UNSC cease-fire vote, Israel has employed 3 distinct types of U.N.-banned WMD on Gaza, Israel has murdered 350 and crippled 1000 children among the total 1100 dead and 5000 wounded, Israel has committed numerous war crimes with the U.S.A.’s active assistance and abominable silence, and the U.S. calls Iran ‘a terrorist nation’???!!! Come again? The U.S. has just made the Mullahs look like a bunch of Mother Theresas (well, not quite).
Israel is the world’s biggest terrorist nation, and the U.S.A. is its “official state sponsor”. Period.
I’m disgusted with the U.S.A., totally disgusted. The more hope we all place in Obama, the worse it gets. It’s like the economic bail-out, the other disaster that increases inversely proportionally to our hopes.

Posted by: Parviz | Jan 15 2009 14:56 utc | 4

On Gaza and Spirituality

“Because the soul has such deep roots in personal and social life and its values run so contrary to modern concerns, caring for the soul may well turn out to be a radical act, a challenge to accepted norms.” One may do this – must do this – whether religious, agnostic, atheist, or none of the above.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 15 2009 15:25 utc | 6

A Scene Of Devastation Video Report From Inside Gaza
Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin reports on the public who are struggling to cope under the bombardment in Gaza.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 15 2009 15:43 utc | 8

I ask, is this off topic?
January 13, 2009
The Chance for a New World Order
By Henry Kissinger
Clinical, methodical and systemic…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 15 2009 15:58 utc | 10

no, they will not forget & they will not forgive

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 15 2009 16:45 utc | 12

there is a webcast now from the u n

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 15 2009 17:21 utc | 14

Still evaluating the outcome from this war. The ceasefire shaping up appears to be a political defeat for Hamas. Fatah may well retake the border for a while. That won’t last, of course.
Both Fatah and Hamas will come out of this war humiliated: Hamas because it could never anywhere go toe-to-toe with the IDF, Fatah because it won’t even pretend that it would try. Hamas, at least, can recover, based on the massive hatred engendered in Gaza (and elsewhere). Fatah? I don’t see how Fatah can recover unless it assassinates Abbas and launches its own armed struggle, or else Israel gives it massive concessions to prop it.
Hamas guerillas have not performed at all well in this conflict. Hopefully they will stop focusing of the f*cking stupid Qassam rockets, and start building a real guerilla infantry force. Israel doesn’t care about civilians casualties: they are just handy excuses. But if Hamas can shoot down an Apache or blow up a Merkava, then Israel will start reacting.
As for Israel, they are back in 1984: they are reviled worldwide, but they have humiliated their enemy, and they have a pawn (Abbas) in control of the best turf on the gameboard.
It took three years for Israel’s “victory” to utterly collapse: their pawn dead, their casualties mounting, and a new and unforseen enemy, the First Intifada, hurting them far more than the PLO ever did.

Posted by: Bill | Jan 15 2009 17:50 utc | 16

r’giap – thanks for the link. there are no posts up yet on today’s session at inner city press. here’s the one from last week when israel protested the original general assembly mtg, containing a copy of the israeli ambassador’s letter to d’escoto at that time

Posted by: b real | Jan 15 2009 17:56 utc | 18

I read somewhere that 45% or so of Americans polled now see Israel’s actions (or our support of them) as wrong. Well, it’s a start, but for crissakes, how much does it take? (Of course, public opinion means nothing, as long as Congress and the MSM are in the pockets of AIPAC.)
We did eventually officially disinvest and embargo S. Africa, and the same could be done w/ Israel. But the ideological obstacles in the case of Israel are a hundred times greater than w/ S. AFrica. Nevertheless, a mass campaign for boycott and embargo is maybe our only weapon, however difficult to organize.

Posted by: seneca | Jan 15 2009 17:59 utc | 20

bill
i am not sure where you are getting your information from – even in the more critical arab press it is clear that in jabalya, tufah & in khen younis the resistance has not only fought heroiclly but also ferociouslly. i would read the absence of news even in haaretz as a confirmation of that & expect soon for them to return to the honesty they are know for
hamas after all is a force, maybe a militia but it certainly not an army – the parallels with the fighters of the warsaw ghetto appear apt to me
certainly, the quassam are little more than theatre
i’m not sure what kind of military victory you can expect under these circumstances – tho the lebanese press speaks of many merkva being destroyed
there is so little information, intentionally after the ground invasion tho i would read that israel is on the ground during the day & hamas fighters retaking ground as a victory in anyone’s language

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 15 2009 18:08 utc | 22

beit hanoun is also another point where the palestinians are fighting fiercely

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 15 2009 19:07 utc | 24

I wonder why no one has called the IDF apologists who categorically stated that “they do not use phosphorous” as the liars that they are? Or laugh aloud at the contention that IDF soldiers do not shoot unarmed civilians made by Tzipi the Pinhead yesterday? Once a Mossad agent, always a Mossad agent.
In other words, why not put to them bluntly that the world has no reason to believe that they’re telling the truth–ever.

Posted by: Obelix | Jan 15 2009 19:12 utc | 26

remembereringgiap et al.:
You may be right. I won’t argue the point that “resistance has fought heroically.” The certainly got bigger stones than I do. But I’m questioning the effectiveness. They are forcing the Israelis to move slowly, and I agree that most Israeli actions at this point are confined to raids, but unless Hamas can get in a few effective strikes like:
1) Knocking out a prime system (MBT or helicopter),
2) Causing a mass casualty battle (even 10 fatalities at once would do it), or
3) Taking prisoners,
then without that, it’s hard to see this as a military victory. Gaza doesn’t have the depth for good guerilla warfare. Unfair for the Palestinians, perhaps (when has live been fair for them?), but nonetheless without scoring some clear points against Israel, Hamas isn’t a credible force.
I think there are other issues to look at, including the massive amount of firepower Israel is using, and the fact that fully half their frontline army is engaged, plus reserves. This tells me that Israel cannot effectively fight a two-front war, even if one front is only Hamas.
And, of course, things may be much worse for the IDF in Gaza than the blacked-out media has revealed. I’d be very interested in such reports if you have them.

Posted by: Bill | Jan 15 2009 19:39 utc | 28

I doubt Hamas has effective anti armor weapon as Hizbullah had. Hizbullah showed a good supply of real anti armour guided missiles and that’s how the Merkava’s legend (in fact a tank just designed to carry kid killers around the ghetto) become the Merkava’s shame. Of course Hamas, and likely some of the other factions, seem to have blown a few tanks or armored vehicles using mines or planted explosives (and don’t expect the heavely military censored israeli media to report about that) but trying to destroy heavy armored tanks with just RPGs isn’t going to work. And much less they are likely to have portable anti air missiles, not even Hizbullah had good AA missiles against helos much less against planes.
As I have said previously the gazans don’t have any better weapon than a street gang in some USA city. In fact some of those drug or mafia groups may have quite better stuff supplied by the army smugglers … Without direct access to a state supplier (Siria and Iran for Hizbullah) and a frontier heavily controlled by their enemies (both Egypt and Israel) you are very limited in what you can smuggled into the ghetto. In fact it’s likely that much of their small arms and munition comes from the spoils left by the western backed Dahlan gangsters.
So I think they are doing quite well with what they have. Provided some help from the corrupt gutless genocide gang that passes for soldier in the western colony in Palestinia who can’t walk two passes without calling air or artillery support (american empire troopers are not better).

Posted by: ThePaper | Jan 15 2009 20:54 utc | 30

Some iranian media (Press TV) frequently reports news (or propaganda, who the hell knows) about military ‘achievements’ of the palestinian resistence. For example:
Israel reinforcement position ‘hit’

Earlier in the day, resistance fighters fired three mortar rockets at Israeli troops in southern Gaza and also destroyed eight Israeli military vehicles in the region, the Hamas-run TV said, adding that they also hit two Israeli tanks with RPG shells.
While Tel Aviv claims that only 12 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the start of the Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, Hamas says that more than 360 Israeli soldiers and military officers have been killed or wounded in the 20-day-old war.

More reports of that kind can be found on their website.
And of course you have Al Manar and other secundary sources providing the palestinian side of the propaganda war but I can’t read arabic so who knows what they are reporting.
Truth, half truth or plain lies don’t expect this kind of report to appear in the western media (our propaganda is really much better than theirs! really! believe us!). The murderous non-army of the colony knows from the Lebanon experience that reports of casualties don’t sit well with their population and the colony media is by law under complete military censorship so it wouldn’t be unlikely if they were hiding some stuff from the public to prevent defeatist thoughts.

Posted by: ThePaper | Jan 15 2009 21:58 utc | 32

Hamas has done well enough on the ground that the IDF is begging Olmert not to order them to start Stage III of Operation Cast Lead.
They are running out of bombs and bullets at the same time that their Damage Assement Teams are telling them they did not even come close to doing enough damage to Hamas in Stages I and II.
Apparently, the IDF has even taking to executing their own, to prevent hostages.
That is pretty good for such a small force.
BTW, Hamas has almost no anti-tank weapons, They have tried three different homebuilt versions of RPG’s but none of them are effective against IDF Armour. It has been a cause for bitter internal fights between the Rocketeers and the Militants, who each have different priorities for the tiny amounts of HE Hamas can get its hands on.

Posted by: Jimbo | Jan 15 2009 22:24 utc | 34

indeed most of the arab press is also available in other languages

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 15 2009 23:27 utc | 36

what does it say r’giap?
Patients flee as flames engulf Gaza hospital: medics
i’m really offended by bullshit generalizing about jews here on this site. last night i attended a slideshow 2 blocks from my house, a presentation about gaza from relief workers who’ve worked there and another woman who lived in the WB and worked in conjunction w/the japanese humanitarian medical team, both of these presenters were jewish.
maybe you are not aware of the tradition of social conscious in the jewish community, but i am. jewish voices for peace here in the bay area have been in continual non stop efforts to bring awareness of the plight of palestinians for YEARS, sometimes the only voices around this neck of the woods.
so just stop the fuck will you. take your generalizations somewhere else. it offends me greatly.

Posted by: annie | Jan 16 2009 2:10 utc | 38

grrr. sorry, my fingers must be drunk again… meat to type, annie…

Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 16 2009 2:28 utc | 40

it is a letter by a jewish veteran of the second world war, a historian who has written an incredible letter to the embassy of israel in france saying things clearly but brutally – how he feels shamed by israel, as a man as a jew – how he thinks israel has missed every opportunity to build peace & in the end his letter says that he would fight israel today in every way he fought the fascists in the 40’s. it is a touching yet incredibly strong document. he goes to the heart of the matter

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 16 2009 2:34 utc | 42

remembereringgiap, you are very polite in you rendition of the letter.
he literally curses the ambassador and israel. He calls on Israels God to curse them to the end of time.

Posted by: sabine | Jan 16 2009 4:59 utc | 44

BREAKING NEWS: MIRACLE ON THE HUDSON!
a plane crash landed in the hudson river and everyone lived! it’s a miracle!
now the media can stretch out exhaustive coverage of this miraculous event for the five days left to the inauguration. i don’t even see Gaza on the scrolling ticker.
i’m watching Larry King, and it’s simply amazing. on the informative panel of guests, there’s a survivor of the crash, Dr. Phil, fucking Sanjay Gupta (O’s totally awesome surgeon general selection) and Aviation Safety Expert Mary Schiavo (probably not related to that vegetable rethugs laughingly feigned to care about to keep the base of fundy jackals happy and deluded that they’re on the side of life)
now, if those crazy zionists can just wrap up their massacre by the 20th, we can still enjoy prince O’s coronation without that downer gaza thing ruining our once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to celebrate this BIG MOMENT in history. things will be different after the 2oth. good omens abound. that cop who executed that young black father by shooting him in the back as he lay prone on the ground? arrested. a plane falls out of the sky landing in a frigid river? zero casualties.
i think what’s wrong in the world is clearly indicated in the title of b’s post. lot’s of people around the world are not good at forgetting stuff. well, let me tell you, the rest of the world is missing out. without forgetting, this country would be a very different place. forgetting is a critical component of our constant forward trajectory; it’s how we can so successfully ignore those yawners who drone on and on about things that happened in the past, then try to connect the dots through time. why look back when there’s a new Daily Show to look forward to? and LOST will be back on the tube next week.

Posted by: Lizard | Jan 16 2009 6:21 utc | 46

Yup, Lizard, I was also disgusted with the “Miracle on the Hudson” crap and all the CNN attention devoted to the ‘hero’ pilot. He did his job, everyone survived, the plane wasn’t in any danger of sinking and he walked (bravely?) through a non-sinking plane twice to check whether there were any passengers left on board. But he has been lionized in the U.S. media in such an exaggerated fashion that one can only conclude that Americans are in desperate need of a ‘hero’ to make them feel good about themselves or, alternatively, a diversion from U.S.-Israeli war crimes.
He showed skill in crash-landing the plane, that was all, but apparently that ‘all’ was sufficient to knock Gaza off the radar. Pitiful.

Posted by: Parviz | Jan 16 2009 7:59 utc | 48

my point is that if you look at any organized peace movements in the US, be it code pink, moveon, women in black, the green party..whatever.. jewish voices are represented. is glen greenwald finally voicing his conscience in order to salvage his own reputation as well as to prevent Israel from destroying itself? should naomi klien finally voicing her conscience in order to salvage her own reputation as well as to prevent Israel from destroying itself? i could go on and on. rachel maddow? naomi wolf? shall we list the jews who have not spoken out against israel? is it their fault? malooga, is it your fault or are you absolved because you write on this site or other blogs. do you write here to in order to salvage their own reputation?
somebody explain to me how this works. shall we piss all over jstreet because they allowed aipac to speak for them, because wake up people, aipac has been speaking for all of us whether we like it or not. congress speaks for aipac and last i heard congress isn’t primarily jewish. we are all the enablers people, you can’t blame the jews for this fucking madness going on any more than you can blame clinton cheney pat robertson bush and every non jewish person who has not only enabled this madness but promoted it. am i wrong? tell me i’m wrong?

Posted by: annie | Jan 16 2009 9:55 utc | 50

annie, you’re dead right and now I see what you meant. It sounded different when I first read your comments. We are all to blame for not speaking out in large enough numbers during the past 60 years. One can argue that the Cold War was partly responsible for the ‘carte blanche’ afforded to Israel, that communications were not so instant and widespread yesterday as they are today, that it really need a phenomenon like Al Qaeda to really focus the global psyche on terrorism AND ITS CAUSES, and that Israel finally overstepped the bounds of its already horrendous parameters by carpet-cluster bombing Lebanon in 2006 and drawing greater global attention to its war crimes.
The real cause of all this is religion, people fighting each other (as fellow Iranian Christiane Amanpour has said) “in God’s Name”.
If these God(-less) religions didn’t exist there wouldn’t have been any Inquisition or Holocaust, and the ‘Palestinian Solution’ wouldn’t have been necessary since the ‘Semitic bond’ between Israelis and Arabs would have given them something in common, a genuine historical and ethnic brotherhood. The Bible, Koran and Talmud are all crap and some months ago I provided excerpts from each to prove they were written by ‘idiot savants’ and now religiously worshipped by billions of people who lay claim to both literacy and logic. If there is a God, He certainly isn’t the one worshipped by Christians, Jews and Muslims who only care about power, nothing more, nothing less. That’s the ONLY reason we, particularly we poor souls in the Middle East, are in the mess we’re in.
And I for one, as an Iranian, am particularly galled that the Arabs forced their ‘religion’ down our thoats after almost 1000 years of Zoroastrianism whose only 3 commandments were: “Think good thoughts, say good words, do good deeds”. Basta!

Posted by: Parviz | Jan 16 2009 10:51 utc | 52

Raise your voice.

Posted by: beq | Jan 16 2009 11:58 utc | 54

mornin’ beqlove, my rep Lynn Woolsey is sponsoring the bill w/kucinich.

Posted by: annie | Jan 16 2009 12:13 utc | 56

annie, you are right. we are all culpable and american citizens in particular hold grave responsibility for this fiasco. each and every one. at least now no one caqn arguably say “I didn’t know.”
{{{{{hugs}}}}}

Posted by: bea | Jan 16 2009 15:37 utc | 58

what a perfidious role the egyptians are playing with the europeans with the help of a representative of abbas

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 17 2009 0:38 utc | 60

the wonder of the internets is to see this betrayal of a people, the palestinian people – close-up & not so strange that is is the countries of latin america who are in the forefront of justice
this diplomatic business is uglier than the war itself & reveals the baseness at the centre of power
what i have found watching this over the last two days is to my surprise both the beauty & the sense of the syrian ambassador who has spoken fundamentally but also lyrically as passion must be – what is no wonder at all is that all the obvious other players especially the europeans are nothing less than – ignoble
ignoble in a way that is too distasteful to decribe

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 17 2009 0:50 utc | 62

& the bombing intensifies tonight as it is clearer the idf can not get to where it wants – so it continues to massacre as a military strategy
they are not only messianic murderers they are also moronic

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 17 2009 4:15 utc | 64

http://palestinian.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1970466%3ABlogPost%3A43743&page=2
If a picture paints a thousand words the above link should leave you utterly speechless. The grandchildren of the Holocaust are as ruthless as the Nazis. One must remember that during WWII there was no Blogosphere, no Al Jazeera, none of the instant communications that highlight atrocities today. So one dreads to imagine what the so-called ‘civilized’ Israelis would be doing if they possessed even a fraction of the communications restrictions enjoyed by the Nazis.
Western citizens overwhelmingly opposed their governments’ diversionary and unprincipled invasion of Iraq. But Israelis seem to be generally as evil as their leaders: Today, the Jerusalem Post reported that 90 % of Israelis oppose a cease-fire UNTIL ALL OBJECTIVES ARE MET, which means UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES
(http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231950849022&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)
Evidently ordinary Israeli citizens favour a ‘Final Solution’ to the “Palestinian Problem”. Hitler must be laughing in his grave.
Well done, Al Jazeera and other ‘independents’. Shame on you, CNN!

Posted by: Parviz | Jan 17 2009 10:02 utc | 66

That’s weird, only the 2nd link appeared. Here’s the first one:
I’ll practise elsewhere from now on (I thought I’d gotten the hang of it!)

Grandchildren of the Holocaust emulating the Nazis

Posted by: Parviz | Jan 17 2009 10:14 utc | 68

do not forgive do not forget

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 17 2009 19:26 utc | 70

at 14 i understood what was happening to the vietnames unser u s onslaught & so became vietnamese, now, in the midst of life knowing wgat has been done & what is happening to the arab people – so i become an arab

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 17 2009 19:56 utc | 72

parviz
i think the press conference took place at the hospital(israeli) where his only daughter who survived is being treated

Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 17 2009 23:42 utc | 74

Israel
needs
its neighbors
to hate
it.
Otherwise no foreign money, no political clout. It’s sort of a colonialist self-loathing.

Posted by: Enoch Root | Jan 18 2009 22:05 utc | 76