In the wake of the controversy of a powerful Rabbi calling for a plague to kill all Palestinians before the start of negotiations between Israel and Palestine, Hamas has found its own way of contributing to the peace process by killing four Israeli settlers, including a pregnant woman. Hamas called the murders an “heroic operation.”
Hamas proudly accepted responsibility for the killings.
In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he had instructed his forces “to pursue the attackers without any diplomatic restraint and to lay hands on the attackers and those who sent them.”
He lost me on the “without any diplomatic restraint” which appears the opposite of an order to “use all lawful means.” That would sound like a carte blanche to violate international law.
What is clear is that radical elements on both sides do not want to see peace and are willing to say or do whatever is necessary to destabilize this process.
Source: New York Times
Mike S,
I believe Carter’s “suffering” is a direct result of his wounded ego and only impacted on his behavior after the loss … I think we saw the same sort of thing in Bush1.
Had he had a better support group within the democratic party after his election, I believe he could have accomplished many good things for the country. The party let him down.
Ronald Reagan gave $3 million dollar speeches in Japan after leaving office, Clinton throws parties, Carter builds houses for the poor.
Blouise,
In my opinion Carter is basically a good man, unfairly maligned when in office and afterwords presented to history as a failure.
While he is a basically good man he suffers with the thought of how history will perceive him and thus strives to attain(atone?)for bad press. His ability to mediate issues is merely superficial, since those cudgels he takes up are decided out of the people’s eyes by those in power. I do respect him though because despite his impotence he fights a good fight
“Let stop pretending that there are rights to occupy land that don’t grow out of the barrel of a gun.”
Carlyle,
I couldn’t agree with you more and as you well now in the past many of our views are quite similar as is our take on the poor state of the world. Where I think we diverge on this issue is that you see it as a David vs. Goliath one, with the Israeli’s being Goliath and the Palestinian the poor David who only has a rock and a sling.
To me the truth is that the Saudi’s money and influence on the US and other governments is more than equal to all the F-16’s available. (As a side not that model plane is vastly outdated an the US arms interests need countries to sell it to).
There is no equity in this discussion because it doen not devolve on claims of who is right or wrong, but on the whims of massive wealth using both sides as pawns in their lust for wealth and power. All we see is illusion spoon-fed to us to keep us blinded to the reality of the situation.
The corporatists in tandem with the uber wealthy are gaining in the battle to return this world to feudalism. They distract us with all sort of diversions to keep us from seeing the world as it really is and that reality is that humanity has progressed little since to toughest ape got to control the food, women and fellows.
While i’m a Jew I hold no love for the Netanyahu’s of the world.
However, if you feel Hamas has some moral high ground you are vastly mistaken. They are thugs, yet smart enough to present themselves as the defenders of their populace, while they loot
whatever they can and send innocents to die for them.
Being a lifelong toiler for human rights and the needed fulfillment of the needs of all humanity, facing the possibility of my own death I gained some further perspective about the world and its’ ills. All politics is bullshit and since I’ve known so many totalitarian leftists, it is difficult for me to differentiate their will to power from that of their counterparts. My beliefs about the need for all humanity to be treated with fairly and with their needs met has not diminished.
My trust in political/social leaders to make it right has.
On my putative death bed, from which fate has perhaps spared me temporarily, I occupied my mind with how solve the conundrum of having humanity evolve past it’s genetic history of sociopathy, towards a humane world. Sorry but I couldn’t figure it out but I’m still trying and will with my last breath.
You will notice of course that I really haven’t engaged you in the actual merits of your points and that was purposeful and out of respect to your intelligence. Point by point we would “slug”
it out and in the end change neither’s mind nor nothing else.
I would like you to at least consider though how truly irrelevant these issues of the day are, when compared to the return to feudalism. Think of Sir Elton John, or Sir Paul McCartney. In Bob Dylan’s words “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
I am not Palestinian or Israeli, and I choose option 2.
I know how upset Israelis get when the world can actually see what their “nation” is doing. But as human beings you should be happy that justice may eventually find its way to those that are being so severely oppressed and mistreated and murdered.
Notice, how every single Israeli who dies makes it to headlines? 2 Israelis were killed!!!! And everyone is appalled.
What about the hundreds of Palestinians that are killed all the time? Where are there headlines? What are they just a side note?
This will not prevail, just like the South was overturned and African Americans now have rights to be full human beings, the Palestinians will soon be there. The world is starting to see what Israel really is.
Daniel R Baker.
“The fact that their government and most of their people are ashamed of such things is precisely the difference;”
When colonization is occurring there may exist a minority of colonists who feel shame for some of the necessary atrocities inflicted on the indigines. Such people never succeed in stopping the terror, genocide or ethnic cleansing. In opposing it they are hardly doing a kindness to the indigines. When the interest of those entitled to have their interests respected require that the human rights of inconvenient members of species homo sapiens sapiens be extinguished, the best course is to conduct the genocide as quickly and mercifully as possible. Israel desperately need a final solution to the Palestinian question.
For those of us who are not Israelis or Palestinians there are 3 possible choices:-
1/ Side with Israel and do whatever we can to help Israel finish off the Palestinians by arguing on Israels behalf and selling them weapons and doing what we can to prevent media exposure of some of the unpleasant necessities of conquest;
2/ Side with the Palestinians and do what we can to show the unpleasant necessities in all their frightfulness in the hope that it will raise enough opposition actually to stop Israeli ethnic cleansing;
3/ Recognize that the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is already a latent fact because of powerful forces mainly the USA that are committed to it and recognize that anything we can do is futile.
Those Israelis who embarrassed by some of their nations actions are traitors to their nation and their race, just as were those Australians and Americans of the past who tried to protect the “human rights” of the respective inconvenient native peoples.
I am not saying I support the killing of anyone there, I do however applaud the efforts of those that are still fighting in hopes that they one day will achieve civil rights. It’s admirable to see these people with no money or resources trying so hard to keep their dignity. Especially when they are up against such a cruel and evil group.
I read the article you posted, now that is laughable. A rubber bullet? That’s what they find their soldiers guilty of? But the guy who shoots a 13 year old school girl 17 times, he’s innocent? Israel wipes out towns over night, shoots down schools, and cuts off water and other resources to Palestinians and they are going to pretend to have any sense of justice?
How can any sensible person expect Palestinians to “compromise”? What do you want them to do? Just accept what Israel is doing to them? Stop throwing rocks at their oppressors?
When I look at American history, I am very proud that those in the colonies refused England’s oppressive ways and fought for their rights. When I look at the African Americans and their plight in this country, I applaud those who stood up for what was right. And I applaud Palestinians that continue to stand up for their rights. That’s how things get better.
Israel cannot treat the Palestinians the way they do and expect them to just comply.
The Israelis are fighting for their homes as well. Jews have lived in the land for thousands of years, usually under occupation themselves. I do not claim that that in any way justifies Israelis murdering unarmed innocent people (even though the Palestinians routinely use children in military roles, which apparently justifies murdering them by your standards). Evidently, however, the Palestinians may murder anyone they want just because at some future point they may be armed.
Miscarriages of justice certainly occur in Israel, but they do try to hold their soldiers accountable, and convictions often occur. See here: http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?ID=181493 The idea of Hamas holding its murderers accountable is laughable: murdering innocent people is the whole point.
The only thing any humane person can wish for in the Middle East is for the two sides to find a way to coexist. That means not glorifying either side’s murderers, and instead supporting those who are willing to compromise.
And if Israel did feel shame for the great evils that they do, they would not publicly attack the flotilla and continue this behavior.
FYI, several Muslim countries have nuclear weapon’s as well. Iran has specifically threatened Israel. Maybe Israel knows that if they were to use their’s it would be the end of them.
Baker,
I disagree, Palestinians are fighting for their dignity. They have a cause. They are fighting for their homes for God’s sake!
Palestinians are fighting those intruding on their land and taking their homes. All Israeli citizens serve in the military, so they are killing someone who either is, will be, or was armed and fighting them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/nov/16/israel2 That’s Israel’s idea of justice!
“Shameless” would be murdering four unarmed people, including a pregnant woman, and then calling a rally attended by 3,000 people to celebrate the “heroic operation.”
Israelis have, at times, murdered innocent Palestinians too, and inadvertently killed far more. The fact that their government and most of their people are ashamed of such things is precisely the difference; it controls and limits the wrongs that they do, when they would otherwise be capable of far worse. Israel has nuclear weapons.
Thank you so much for posting that video and showing what the Palestinians have to go through, their land, road, and even beds are being occupied by Israeli soldiers. May God be with these oppressed people.
After all this, Palestinians who resist Israeli soldiers degrading them like this and seek some sort of human rights are called ‘terrorists’. But it seems clear who the real terrorists are, those who are not even willing to show their faces in shame of what they are doing.
When Palestinian freedom fighters do something, they proudly claim it. Once again being a clear sign of who is right and who is wrong.
Israel is shameless and cruel, I have no idea why the US supports such inhumane behavior.
Settlers certainly have no moral right to that land either.
I didn’t know what to think about settlers vs Palestinians until I saw a 60 Minutes report about an Israeli settlement and the fighting surrounding it.
Only one side consistently rattled off about writings from millenia ago simply as if that could be the only reason they would ever need.
Byron.
“Palestinians have no moral right to that land.”.
Moral rights are entirely irrelevant, the only rights that matter grow out of the barrel of a gun.
Byron.
“There is no moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel, one is a crazed irrational beast, the other is protecting itself which it has a moral right to do.”.
Wrong, both Israelis and Palestinians are acting according to the same human nature. It is normal for humans who have superior weapons to dispossess those less powerful from heir lands and it is normal for those being dispossessed with whatever tactics are available them. Genocide and ethnic cleansing are absolutely normal human behaviours as are the will to carry out genocide or ethnic cleansing even when power is lacking.
The differences between behaviours of Israelis and Palestinians is entirely a function of the power imbalance.
Byron.
“The Arabs backed the wrong side during WWII, the Grand Mufti of Palestine sided with the Third Reich.”.
I am not surprised that the Palestinians sided with the Third Reich. Unlike the Germans the Palestinians had valid reasons to hate and fear Jews as they already had more than enough evidence that the Jewish immigrants intended to dispossess them and drive them out. The Jewish immigration would never have been allowed had the Palestinians had sovereignty, but they did not. The sovereignty over that chunk of the fractured Ottoman Empire was held by the British mandate and the British exercised it in a way that failed to protect the interests of the Palestinians. They prioritized their Imperial designs including a state for Jews over any fiduciary duty to the existing occupants. Most probably it was Jew hatred that prompted the British to support a Jewish state in Palestine as the British were as antisemitic as the rest of Europe and wanted to get rid of their Jews as well. Mass immigration into Palestine giving the proto-Israelis the numbers needed to ethnically cleanse the Arabs would never have occurred had Britain done its duty to the Palestinians. But Britain did not instead it provided the military protection necessary for Jewish immigration to occur against the wishes of the indigines.
Let stop pretending that there are rights to occupy land that don’t grow out of the barrel of a gun. If Israelis have the right to that land it is not because of their mythical links to it in Roman empire times or because of the Balfour declaration or acts of the League of Nations or the UN, it is because they have more and bigger guns than the Arabs and also friends with more and bigger guns. Without the help first of the British and then the US the military power imbalance in the middle east in favour of Israel that allowed the ethnic cleansing in 1948 could not have occurred. If somehow the Palestinians or their allies ever enough tanks, F16s and killer drones of their own they may gain the right to take the land back. There is only one source of rights and that is might. But weak people still have their hate and their thirst for vengeance. I am not surprised that Palestinians are willing to kill themselves to take a few Jews with them, they are obeying the same human nature that drives the Israels and the USA. The USA felt entitled to kill over a million Iraquis as revenge for the September 11 airlinering of the WTC. Should we be surprised that the Palestinians, weak as they are don’t take the few opportunities available to them to punish Jews. I think that they are misguided in targeting Israel, Israel was helped by bigger bullys the UK and the USA and I think that the Palestinians, the Arabs and the Muslims should be directing their efforts to punishing the citizens of the UK, the USA and Australia and all Jews world wide and all Christians world wide for their support of Israel.
The Arabs backed the wrong side during WWII, the Grand Mufti of Palestine sided with the Third Reich. Seems to me they lost on both the physical and intellectual front with that choice. Palestinians have no moral right to that land.
The fact Israel has F-16’s, tanks, helicopter gunships and all the skill and knowledge to use them speaks volumes. Had the circumstances been reversed Israel would have ceased to exist many years ago.
There is no moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel, one is a crazed irrational beast, the other is protecting itself which it has a moral right to do.
“Sec. 16. THE state of war is a state of enmity and destruction: and therefore declaring by word or action, not a passionate and hasty, but a sedate settled design upon another man’s life, puts him in a state of war with him against whom he has declared such an intention, and so has exposed his life to the other’s power to be taken away by him, or any one that joins with him in his defence, and espouses his quarrel; it being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the commonlaw of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.”
John Locke State of War
Mike Spindell.
By the way have you encountered the book “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander. I strongly recommend it as it it is relevant to a discussion we had on the drug laws on another thread long ago.
Alan Bean has a good review at his Friends of Justice site.
Gingerbaker.
What kind of mindset is required to support US and Israeli terrorism by means of F16s, helicopter gunships and tanks? Israel has been inflicting terror on Palestinians since before Israel existed, but because uniformed army officers do the killing it does not satisfy the restrictive definition of terrorism. The words “terror” and “terrorism” as used by the US and the Israelis are bent, made for constructing lies as they selectively delegitimise one side, the less powerful one in a war once the powerful side considers that it has won and the other side is no longer entitled to resist.
Realize that by current definitions the courageous fighters of the French resistance were “terrorists” and the Nazis were more than justified in summarily executing them.
I am not a humanitarian. Were I to meet an extra-terrestial alien I would advise said alien to get his authorities to exterminate the human race as quickly and efficiently abnd as soon as possible, since were we humans to escape into space we will have no compunction in doing the same to the aliens before stealing their planets. There won’t even be the possibility of human conquerers raping the aliens females and leaving a underclass with a few drops of alien blood to act as scapegoats for the colonial human descendants in the conquered alien worlds.
Nothing that Israel has done or is doing is any worse than what the Nazis did to the Jews, The Americans did to the un-American subhumans previously populating the continent or that Australia did to the unlawful migrants who arived 40,000 years before the rightful owners. One by one humans are tolerable but in aggregate they are vilely hypocritical species. The Gods worshipped by humans whether Christian, Judaic or Islamic are violent and tyrannical and genocide is the inevitable result of people following them.
Lets face it our species is hopelessly flawed, the idea that we have a right to continuing existence is absurd.
Thank you carlyle, for so eloquently expressing a mindset required to support palestinian terrorism. And an uglier mindset I can’t recall.
Well done – you make “Mike”, above, seem like a humanitarian. And that takes some talent.
Mike S.
Glad to see that you are back to blogging.
Most of the time agree with you but on Israel/Palestine I cannot.
You could replace each occurrence of “Hamas” or “Palestine” in the above quote with “Israel” and each occurrence of “Israel” with “Hamas” or “Palestine” and the quote would be no more or less truthful.
What we have here is an irreconcilable collision of interests, both sides need the same land, both sides want the same land, both sides feel entitled to the same land and any concession to one is a blow to the interests of the other. One side has a powerful army the other merely guerrilla fighters wrongly and unfairly labeled as terrorists (the very word terrorist is a bent word made for constructing lies). Both sides use terror as a strategy but one side has F16s, tanks and helicopter gunships, the other merely small arms. I have to say that I approve of the Hamas fighters killing “innocent” Israelis just as I approve of Australian Aborigines killing white Australians, native Americans killing colonists and their descendants. A war is not over just because the conquerer says it is over, it has simply moved from the pitched battle phase to the occupation/terrorist phase.
As far as Palestinians are concerned there are no innocent Israelis as all Israelis whether wearing army uniforms or not are members of the state that has robbed them of their land with violence and murder. As far as the Israelis are concerned there are no innocent Palestinians as even those that don’t put on suicide belts or gun down settlers either support those who do or are insufficiently vehement in their opposition.
I try to imagine how I would feel were I a Palestinian, an Arab or a Muslim instead of as I am a white ex-Christian atheist. I expect that I would hate the US, Israel, white people, Jews and Christians and would cheer each successful terrorist attack against them.
What is happening in Israel/Palestine now and has been happening for 60 years since 1948 and to a lesser extend during the previous years of the British mandate over Palestine is an act of colonial conquest and dispossession accompanied by certain necessary infliction of terror and murder to accomplish the transfer of land from indigines to colonists at a price the latter are willing to pay, that is nothing.
Mike were we in the possession of a working time machine, you and I could go back and observe earlier and mostly forgotten history of our own nations when genocide and ethnic cleansing of inferior races was being performed by right thinking people but without the journalistic scrutiny that Israel suffers. Those who defend Israel on the grounds that they have not used their military advantage to exterminate the Palestinians have it the wrong way round. The fact is if Israel bit the bullet and set up mass production gas chambers to process several million Palestinians it would be much kinder. I have written many letters to newspapers pointing out that Australia’s treatment of its feloniously indigenous prior occupants compares badly with Hitler’s treatment of the Jews. A Jew once processed in the ovens was out of his misery while the pathetic remnants of Australia’s pre-1788 illegal immigrants are stuck in what are in fact squalid refugee camps in the very nation from which they need refuge.
The fact is that many Israelis have a eliminationist level of hatred for Palestinians and are not coy in saying it out loud. One Rabbi has in the last few days implored God to send a plague to kill of the evil Palestinians who are “Israel haters”, another has published a version of the Torah, The King’s Torah that justifies the killing of non-Jews and secular Jews even babies if they are likely to grow up with the wrong ideas.
What is incredible is that Israel and the pre-Israeli Jewish colonists have managed to conceal for so long their intentional ethnic cleansing which always was part of the Zionist plan. The Palestinians who fled in 1948 did so not because Arab Governments told them to but because Jewish ethnic cleansers killed enough of them to make it clear that failure to flee was to risk life. You do not have to kill a lot to start an ethnic cleansing, just enough pour encourager les autres.
When Arab terrorist finally obtain a nuke and detonate it in an American city I will be cheering. While I like many Americans including my American cousin and the denizens of this blog I hate your Nation. The USA and its government and its governing class including its current president and the previous president are quite simply evil. They are psychopaths and your nation is a pathocracy as described in this recent post in Ponerolgy The Science of Evil.