[N_Fiddledog]

Op Ed from Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post.

Moral clarity in Gaza

"Israel accepts an Egyptian-proposed Gaza cease-fire; Hamas keeps firing. Hamas deliberately aims rockets at civilians; Israel painstakingly tries to avoid them, actually telephoning civilians in the area and dropping warning charges, so-called roof knocking.

“Here’s the difference between us,” explains the Israeli prime minister. “We’re using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles.”
Charles Krauthammer writes a weekly political column that runs on Fridays. View Archive

Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity. Yet we routinely hear this Israel-Gaza fighting described as a morally equivalent “cycle of violence.” This is absurd. What possible interest can Israel have in cross-border fighting? Everyone knows Hamas set off this mini-war. And everyone knows the proudly self-declared raison d’etre of Hamas: the eradication of Israel and its Jews.

Apologists for Hamas attribute the blood lust to the Israeli occupation and blockade. Occupation? Does no one remember anything? It was less than 10 years ago that worldwide television showed the Israeli army pulling die-hard settlers off synagogue roofs in Gaza as Israel uprooted its settlements, expelled its citizens, withdrew its military and turned every inch of Gaza over to the Palestinians. There was not a soldier, not a settler, not a single Israeli left in Gaza.

And there was no blockade. On the contrary. Israel wanted this new Palestinian state to succeed. To help the Gaza economy, Israel gave the Palestinians its 3,000 greenhouses that had produced fruit and flowers for export. It opened border crossings and encouraged commerce.
The Israel Defense Forces released a video on Thursday that they claim shows a tunnel that Hamas militants planned to use to attack Israel. (YouTube/The Israel Defense Forces)

The whole idea was to establish the model for two states living peacefully and productively side by side. No one seems to remember that, simultaneous with the Gaza withdrawal, Israel dismantled four smaller settlements in the northern West Bank as a clear signal of Israel’s desire to leave the West Bank as well and thus achieve an amicable two-state solution.

This is not ancient history. This was nine years ago.

And how did the Gaza Palestinians react to being granted by the Israelis what no previous ruler, neither Egyptian, nor British, nor Turkish, had ever given them — an independent territory? First, they demolished the greenhouses. Then they elected Hamas. Then, instead of building a state with its attendant political and economic institutions, they spent the better part of a decade turning Gaza into a massive military base, brimming with terror weapons, to make ceaseless war on Israel.

Where are the roads and rail, the industry and infrastructure of the new Palestinian state? Nowhere. Instead, they built mile upon mile of underground tunnels to hide their weapons and, when the going gets tough, their military commanders. They spent millions importing and producing rockets, launchers, mortars, small arms, even drones. They deliberately placed them in schools, hospitals, mosques and private homes to better expose their own civilians. (Just Thursday, the U.N. announced that it found 20 rockets in a Gaza school.) And from which they fire rockets at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Why? The rockets can’t even inflict serious damage, being almost uniformly intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system. Even West Bank leader Mahmoud Abbas has asked: “What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?”

It makes no sense. Unless you understand, as Tuesday’s Post editorial explained, that the whole point is to draw Israeli counterfire.

This produces dead Palestinians for international television. Which is why Hamas perversely urges its own people not to seek safety when Israel drops leaflets warning of an imminent attack.

To deliberately wage war so that your own people can be telegenically killed is indeed moral and tactical insanity. But it rests on a very rational premise: Given the Orwellian state of the world’s treatment of Israel (see: the U.N.’s grotesque Human Rights Council), fueled by a mix of classic anti-Semitism, near-total historical ignorance and reflexive sympathy for the ostensible Third World underdog, these eruptions featuring Palestinian casualties ultimately undermine support for Israel’s legitimacy and right to self-defense.

In a world of such Kafkaesque ethical inversions, the depravity of Hamas begins to make sense. This is a world in which the Munich massacre is a movie and the murder of Klinghoffer is an opera — both deeply sympathetic to the killers. This is a world in which the U.N. ignores humanity’s worst war criminals while incessantly condemning Israel, a state warred upon for 66 years that nonetheless goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid harming the very innocents its enemies use as shields.

It’s to the Israelis’ credit that amid all this madness they haven’t lost their moral scruples. Or their nerve. Those outside the region have the minimum obligation, therefore, to expose the madness and speak the truth. Rarely has it been so blindingly clear."

http://m.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ch ... story.html

[BRAH]

Israel has a right to defend itself.

[Goober911]

So after cleansing Hamas from Gaza will Israel sit down at the peace table?

[redhatmamma]

Excellent article by Krauthammer, maybe people are waking up to the stomach turning Hamas Dead Baby tactics. Hamas has no regard for the people whatsoever, they could have accepted the peace proposal as Israel did which would give them a chance to earn trust. They are sacrificing the blood of the people for bigoted ideology and political ambition. How many people can be fed and housed with the money spent on rockets which earn them nothing but retaliation and bloodshed. IMO Hamas is/are certifiably insane.


http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... icing.html

[Goober911]

redhatmamma redhatmamma:

Excellent article by Krauthammer, maybe people are waking up to the stomach turning Hamas Dead Baby tactics. Hamas has no regard for the people whatsoever, they could have accepted the peace proposal as Israel did which would give them a chance to earn trust. They are sacrificing the blood of the people for bigoted ideology and political ambition. How many people can be fed and housed with the money spent on rockets which earn them nothing but retaliation and bloodshed. IMO Hamas is/are certifiably insane.


http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... icing.html

What peace proposal?

[redhatmamma]

This one

http://www.dw.de/hamas-rejects-egyptian ... a-17785984

[desertdude]

Oh you mean the one that was hatched without even consulting them ? And Egypt is not an ally of Hamas, so pretty much pointless for people to make up their own truces without actually involving one of the main parties.

Hamas has made a 10 point 10 year peace proposal, and pretty reasonable demands at that why not accept that, fine if you have disagreements sit down and talk and iron it out, thats how talks take place anyway, both parties come in with their demands, and they both sit down, some points are accepted some are compromised etc etc.

Like Jon Snow said in the video posted earlier Israel has tried everything from sanctions, sieges and bombing the shit out Gaza except for actually talk to the legal govt there.

http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protecti ... ire-363011

[Goober911]

redhatmamma redhatmamma:

This one

http://www.dw.de/hamas-rejects-egyptian ... a-17785984

That is a ceasefire,peace is where both sides sit down and hammer out an agreement.

[desertdude]

More Israeli cheering at the bombardment

[N_Fiddledog]

$1:

West Bank Palestinians cheered on Saturday as Hamas militants fired the largest salvo of rockets yet on the Tel Aviv area since the start of the recent escalations.

http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protecti ... ers-362549

[Goober911]

desertdude desertdude:

More Israeli cheering at the bombardment

Wackos on both sides as we well know.

[N_Fiddledog]

"In light of the recent round of fighting in Gaza, the Hamas interior ministry has issued guidelines to Gaza Strip social media users for reporting events and discussing them with outsiders.

The ministry's guidelines, which it is calling the "Be Aware – Social Media Activist Awareness Campaign," were issued via an instructional video posted on its official website and via posters published on its Twitter and Facebook pages. Both the video and the posters were also posted on the ministry's social media accounts and forums.[1]"

http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/ ... .htm#_edn1

The translation by the pro-Israel translation service Memri is posted below. Their specialty is showing you stuff Hamas doesn't want you to see.

Here is the way Hamas wants its friendlies to behave on Western Social Media. If you are not forbidden by Communists, Progressives or Islamists to see translations feel free to have a look.

$1:

"Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don't forget to always add 'innocent civilian' or 'innocent citizen' in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.

"Begin [your reports of] news of resistance actions with the phrase 'In response to the cruel Israeli attack,' and conclude with the phrase 'This many people have been martyred since Israel launched its aggression against Gaza.' Be sure to always perpetuate the principle of 'the role of the occupation is attack, and we in Palestine are fulfilling [the role of] the reaction.'

"Beware of spreading rumors from Israeli spokesmen, particularly those that harm the home front. Be wary regarding accepting the occupation's version [of events]. You must always cast doubts on this [version], disprove it, and treat it as false.

"Avoid publishing pictures of rockets fired into Israel from [Gaza] city centers. This [would] provide a pretext for attacking residential areas in the Gaza Strip. Do not publish or share photos or video clips showing rocket launching sites or the movement of resistance [forces] in Gaza.

"To the administrators of news pages on Facebook: Do not publish close-ups of masked men with heavy weapons, so that your page will not be shut down [by Facebook] on the claim that you are inciting violence. In your coverage, be sure that you say: 'The locally manufactured shells fired by the resistance are a natural response to the Israeli occupation that deliberately fires rockets against civilians in the West Bank and Gaza'..."

Additionally, the interior ministry prepared a series of suggestions specifically for Palestinian activists who speak to Westerners via social media. The ministry emphasizes that conversations with them should be conducted differently from conversations with other Arabs. It stated:

* "When speaking to the West, you must use political, rational, and persuasive discourse, and avoid emotional discourse aimed at begging for sympathy. There are elements with a conscience in the world; you must maintain contact with them and activate them for the benefit of Palestine. Their role is to shame the occupation and expose its violations.

* "Avoid entering into a political argument with a Westerner aimed at convincing him that the Holocaust is a lie and deceit; instead, equate it with Israel's crimes against Palestinian civilians.

*"The narrative of life vs. the narrative of blood: [When speaking] to an Arab friend, start with the number of martyrs. [But when speaking] to a Western friend, start with the number of wounded and dead. Be sure to humanize the Palestinian suffering. Try to paint a picture of the suffering of the civilians in Gaza and the West Bank during the occupation's operations and its bombings of cities and villages.

* "Do not publish photos of military commanders. Do not mention their names in public, and do not praise their achievements in conversations with foreign friends!"

Screenshots of the actual memo in Arabic available at the link below.

http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/ ... .htm#_edn1

[Goober911]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/world ... ottom-well

GAZA CITY — Even as Israeli forces pushed deeper into the Gaza Strip, unleashing intense artillery fire as they moved to demolish militants’ tunnels into Israel, several Hamas fighters slipped through one of the passages on Saturday and killed two Israeli soldiers on patrol before being driven back, the Israeli military said.
The infiltration, the second in three days, was the latest indication that the tunnel network from Gaza into Israel is far more extensive than previously publicly known. The attack seemed to send a message that Hamas was undeterred in its efforts to launch assaults on Israel, and it could spur a new escalation: Israel cited an earlier infiltration on Thursday as the immediate catalyst for its ground invasion of Gaza.

[Xort]

The only cease fire Egypt can agree to with Israel is one between Egypt and Israel.

That Egypt considers Hamas to be a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that Egypt has banned and locked thousands of its members. I don't see how Egypt should have a say in the Gaza Israel relations.

At the end of the day, the side that's actively killing non combatants is the side that is wrong.

I'd be willing to throw my support behind Israel on a single condition. Full and equal citizenship for all people. Not a special relation like Canada, the USA have with their native bands, but a simple full equality.

I think it would be ironically great if sanctions identical to the ones placed on Gaza were applied to Israel.

[redhatmamma]

Maybe all countries should quit sending aid to Palestine until Hamas agrees to a cease fire. Hamas does not want peace, all it wants is dead Jews and all of Israel and that's the bottom line.