The situation in Israel and Palestine continues to grow worse on both sides. First you had the savage murder of three Israeli teens. Then you had the retaliation burning of a Palestinian teenager. Now protests are erupting all over Israel and the world on both sides. Some of the coverage is focusing on statements made by Israeli lawmaker Ayelet Shaked on Facebook that day before three Israeli men went out and picked up Muhammad Abu Khdeir, 16, at random and burned him alive. Shaked’s post calls Palestinians “little snakes” and declares that “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy.” Now comments by Israeli Knesset member Ayelet Shaked has caused an international outcry including contributing to a continuing rift with Turkey. Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denounced the remarks and denounced Israel in an analogy to the Nazi regime. The situation is clearly getting worse by the day in the region.
Ayelet Shaked is a member of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party, which is part of the ruling coalition. She is quoted as calling for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who give birth to “little snakes.” Shaked posted a screed on Facebook that various critics are denouncing as a call for genocide. Shaked reportedly stated: “They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists . . . are all our enemies and their blood should be on our hands. This also applies to the mothers of the dead terrorists.”
The Facebook posting stated:
“Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”
Her comments have become the focus of the rising protests over Israel’s response to the killing of the teenagers and later rockets attacks. Turkey’s Prime Minister responded with to the comments and later Israeli retaliatory strikes with a charge that Israel is now engaging state terrorism. He drew an analogy that itself is likely to enrage many Israelis: “An Israeli woman said Palestinian mothers should be killed, too. And she’s a member of the Israeli parliament. What is the difference between this mentality and Hitler’s?”
Shaked holds degree in electrical engineering and computer sciences and she worked in marketing for Texas Instruments. She has past ties to Benjamin Netanyahu. From 2006-2008, she was the office director for the office of Netanyahu. She then established “My Israel” with Naftali Bennet, but in January 2012 she was elected to serve as the coordinator of Likud. She later became a Knesset member for the Jewish Home Party, a successor party to the National Religious Party. The party is committed to a nation governed by Jewish law under the belief that Jews are divinely ordained to rule over the Land of Israel. The party has been active in supporting the expansion of Jewish settlements in Palestinian terrorizes and largely represents Orthodox Jews according to news report.
Here is what has been posted as a full translation of Shaked’s statement:
The Palestinian people has declared war on us, and we must respond with war. Not an operation, not a slow-moving one, not low-intensity, not controlled escalation, no destruction of terror infrastructure, no targeted killings. Enough with the oblique references. This is a war. Words have meanings. This is a war. It is not a war against terror, and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority. These too are forms of avoiding reality. This is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? Ask them, they started.
I don’t know why it’s so hard for us to define reality with the simple words that language puts at our disposal. Why do we have to make up a new name for the war every other week, just to avoid calling it by its name. What’s so horrifying about understanding that the entire Palestinian people is the enemy? Every war is between two peoples, and in every war the people who started the war, that whole people, is the enemy. A declaration of war is not a war crime. Responding with war certainly is not. Nor is the use of the word “war”, nor a clear definition who the enemy is. Au contraire: the morality of war (yes, there is such a thing) is founded on the assumption that there are wars in this world, and that war is not the normal state of things, and that in wars the enemy is usually an entire people, including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.
And the morality of war knows that it is not possible to refrain from hurting enemy civilians. It does not condemn the British air force, which bombed and totally destroyed the German city of Dresden, or the US planes that destroyed the cities of Poland and wrecked half of Budapest, places whose wretched residents had never done a thing to America, but which had to be destroyed in order to win the war against evil. The morals of war do not require that Russia be brought to trial, though it bombs and destroys towns and neighborhoods in Chechnya. It does not denounce the UN Peacekeeping Forces for killing hundreds of civilians in Angola, nor the NATO forces who bombed Milosevic’s Belgrade, a city with a million civilians, elderly, babies, women, and children. The morals of war accept as correct in principle, not only politically, what America has done in Afghanistan, including the massive bombing of populated places, including the creation of a refugee stream of hundreds of thousands of people who escaped the horrors of war, for thousands of whom there is no home to return to.
And in our war this is sevenfold more correct, because the enemy soldiers hide out among the population, and it is only through its support that they can fight. Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. Actors in the war are those who incite in mosques, who write the murderous curricula for schools, who give shelter, who provide vehicles, and all those who honor and give them their moral support. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.
By the way, there was an interesting interview (here) with the Israeli spokesman (who by they way — regardless of how you feel about the merits of his argument — holds up well under a withering series of questions). The interview covers both views of the ongoing conflict.
UPDATE: Shaked responded by stressing that she was citing and quoting an article written by another individual some 12 years ago:
Let’s start with my July 1 Facebook post. It was written some 12 years ago, but never published, by a dear man, the recently departed journalist Uri Elitzur. The gist of his article was that once one side in a war attacks the other side’s civilians, they can no longer morally claim a special status for their own civilians.
Go ahead, ask a Hebrew speaking friend to translate it for you, they’ll confirm this is what my Facebook post was about. But you’ll find not a trace of that in Resnick’s account. Perhaps it’s his own ignorance of the Hebrew language. After all, he got the text from Electronic Intifada, a website dedicated to daily and hourly vilification of my country.
All Resnick had to do to make Elitzur’s sober, legally minded discussion sound like a speech made by Hitler himself, was to cherry pick words out of context. A call for the indiscriminate killing of children is a terrible thing. But what if the statement was that any time you attack our children, you’re exposing your own people to the same fate? Still unsettling, but rational when you consider their civilian population is actively supporting and participating in their war and terror efforts. It’s not a call for indiscriminate murder.
Hopefully the location the missile fired from will be established.
I’ll bet the persons who fired the missile were a bit trigger happy and the deployment of the weapon system to the area was certainly state sponsored.
I don’t see the rebels as being responsible for this, that is the home grown kind. What type of regular Ukrainian, that is an average person joining the cause, has access and has training for a sophisticated weapon such as this?
If the Ukrainian government ordered the airliner to be shot down why did this happen 50 km from the border with Russia after having travelled already nearly fully across the country. The Russians were suspected of shooting down a Ukrainian Cargo aircraft earlier and this happened.
My opinion, based upon what I have read so far, is that the missile was fired from a Russian missile battery, just inside the Russian side of the border, upon semi-standing orders and the airliner was mistaken for a Ukrainian aircraft. I extremely doubt the Russian and Ukrainian governments would intentionally order the shooting down of a civilian airliner knowing it was such. They have nothing to gain in doing so, plus they are certainly more moral and honorable than that.
But something went horribly wrong with either the communication or targeting of the airliner and someone on the ground acted way out of line.
It likely is in my view is an analogue of what happened when a US naval ship shot down the Iranian airliner and not the same circumstance as with the case of the KAL 007 flight shot down in 1983 as it mistakenly crossed over Russian territory.
What Randy said. To bring down a large aircraft above 25,000 feet takes a missile as big as a telephone pole.
The US made Stinger has about a 15,000 foot range. One of the largest human portable SAM missiles is the UK’s Starstreak, and it’s maximum altitude is about 23,000 feet.
Darren, Unfortunately, you have a lot of errors. I agree that according to Gen Ryan, this kind of weapon is too sophisticated for the pro-Russian rebels to use, and I think that all folks agree this had to be done by professionals. It takes a lot of training and practice to shoot the BUK system.
The facts that we know are that the fascist parties staged a coup that overthrew the government of Yanukovych and forced him to flee. These same parties are now in control of the military, and interior police forces. I seriously doubt that Porochenko has control of them since they have been recruiting and arming units in those areas made up only of their own supporters. Thus these fascists have access to and control over such weapons, and can place them in their party units. It is fairly obvious why the fascists would shoot down the airliner at or near the Russian border to make it look like the Russians did it. Thus provoking outrage against the Russians which would lead to more weapons and troops to help them attack Russia. The Russians are not so stupid as to give control of such a powerful weapon like this to a ragtag band of civilians. The Ukrainian fascists are quite prepared to shoot not only civilians down, but they were shooting their own people in the square to generate outrage at the late government. I doubt the Ukrainian President had any part in this, since he is hostage to his temporary allies.
The Iranian Airbus shot down by the US Navy was not shot down by a naval aircraft. It was shot down by the Aegis missile defense system. The Navy was rather pissed off that a one billion dollar system could not tell the difference between an A320, and an F-14. Turns out they chalked it up to human error, something I am sure the Iranians and most of the rest of the world did not buy.
KAL007 did not accidentally fly over that prohibited area. It was planned and I am sure with the 007 number it had plenty of cameras on board to photograph what it saw. That was shot down by an intercepting aircraft but only after the crew failed to respect the rules for landing on Soviet territory.
The War on Gaza and the Cycle of Impunity
If Israel is not brought to justice, it will commit the same crimes again and again.
As we go to press, Israel’s third assault on Gaza in five years continues into its second week, with no end in sight. So far the Israeli military has killed nearly 200 Palestinians—some 80 percent of them civilians, according to the United Nations—and wounded more than 1,300. Israeli officials boast of their precision targeting, but the high civilian casualty rate, stemming from deliberate attacks on homes as well as a hospital, school, cafe, a rehab center for the disabled, mosques and other nonmilitary infrastructure, calls to mind the conclusion of Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, who wrote, “The goal of Operation Protective Edge is to restore the calm; the means: killing civilians. The slogan of the Mafia has become official Israeli policy.”
Of course, Hamas’s strategy of firing poorly aimed rockets—some 1,000 of them to date—at Israeli cities is just as atrocious as the far more deadly Israeli barrages; both are in fact violations of international law amounting to war crimes. But the wildly disproportionate casualty rate—one Israeli has been killed so far, and a few injured—exposes the true nature of this “war,” in which one of the world’s most powerful militaries uses F-16s, helicopter gunships, drones and heavy artillery against a nearly defenseless, imprisoned population with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Reflexive US support for Israel by politicians from both parties is of long vintage and no surprise to anyone. Even so, it was shocking and shameful to hear White House and US diplomats repeatedly voice support for Israel’s “right to defend itself” as it rained bombs and missiles down on the people of Gaza. Much of the US media repeated tired clichés about the “cycle of violence,” as if the conflict began when three Israeli teens were kidnapped and murdered. But lost in the media frenzy was the deeper context to this latest round of bloodshed. The collapse of the ill-starred peace process in the spring had created a dangerous vacuum. Secretary of State John Kerry mostly attributed the failure to Israel’s relentless settlement project. Israel, for its part, blamed the accord between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which it was determined to destroy.
The government saw its opportunity in the kidnapping of the three teens: although Israeli police were almost certain within days that the teens had been murdered—and almost certainly by freelance thugs rather than Hamas operatives—the Shin Bet placed a gag order on the media so that it could round up hundreds of Hamas members. At the same time, the government ginned up a #BringBackOurBoys campaign—a cruel deception of the anguished parents, but also part of a strategy to foment public hysteria against Palestinians in general and Hamas in particular. It worked—perhaps better than intended, as an ominous, pogromlike atmosphere fell across the country when the teens’ bodies were found, with Netanyahu himself tweeting a cry of “vengeance for the blood of a small child.” The mob attacks culminated in the lynching of a Palestinian teen.
(cont.)
http://www.thenation.com/article/180683/war-gaza-and-cycle-impunity#
Someone called Israel a democracy? Ask anyone there who dares to disagree with the blood lust, like this kid. Waiting for justification from the usual suspects.
http://www.iinclude.com/young-american-jew-stands-palestine-wont-believe-happens-next/
@NickS
Imagine that. The poor victims hid their missiles in a school. Imagine the Longfellow(?) poem. . .
Missile Tov???
by Squeeky Fromm
I shot a missile I believe
Which fell to earth in Tel Aviv.
The IDF guys got real sore
And so they fired sixteen more.
I see them now, their smokey trails
Coming this way and HOLY CR
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
PS: Missed you the last few days.
@Max1
Sorry for the delay. It was chow time and you have to wolf your food down before the other inmates take it away from you. Let me tell you, some of these old folks are heck on wheels. I keep a butter knife shank on me to whack their hands with.
Anyway, I started reading your NYT article and it flatly says the Gazans fired missiles first. Sooo, why am I supposed to feel sorry for them???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky, The UN, who HATE ISRAEL, just reluctantly reported today they found a dozen Hamas missiles in a UN school in Gaza.
Max-1,
Thanks for reminding me about where Joe is. JT has a blog about that Biden Ukraine gas conflict of interest deal.
With all the excitement going on and everyone throwing rockets & bombs, it slipped mind. Please except my apology. I’m going into NYC and see if I can crash a party.
Again, You are dishonest. Shooting down a passenger air plane IS AN ACT OF WAR. I did not say there should be a war. Indeed I said we should avoid war and said how best to do it. You are on my do not read or respond list. Like others here, you’re dead to me now. I should have put you on that list a long time ago. Ciao.
How about defending your assertion Russian backed rebels didn’t have the capability to do this. You MUST eat that crow before I respond.
I have not seen the reports number one, number two it is quite different to shoot down a cargo turboprop plane at 20,000′ and shooting down other smaller kinds of aircraft. Nobody doubted that they could shoot down a helicopter with small rockets as they did previously. Shooting down a jet at 33,000′ is quite another matter and requires a lot more than a shoulder fired missile.
Being reported on CNN. Just this week Russian backed rebels shot down a Ukraine jet and cargo plane, bragging about their deeds. This morning a rebel leader bragged on Twitter about shooting down a Ukraine cargo plane @ the time and place the MALAYSIAN passenger jet was shot out of the sky. There were reportedly 23 Americans on board. Our president needs to make a forceful statement and arm the Ukrainian people to defend themselves against a murderous KGB animal named Putin. A “line in the sand” screw up emboldened Putin. A real line needs to be drawn this time. Shooting down passenger planes w/ our citizens is an act of war. There is no debate on that. You prevent a war by responding forcefully and demanding answers from Putin. You need to stop the Hampton’s fundraisers, and get to work protecting US citizens. Something you swore to do. Of course, Obama also swore to uphold the Constitution and we know how that worked out.
How about when the US deliberately shot down the Iranian Airbus in international airspace and on its designated route? Think that the international community should have declared war on the USA? How about banning all US flights going to other countries as we did when the Soviets shot down KAL 007 over SOVIET prohibited airspace.
Squeeky,
It you could simply explain why Israel decided to NOT enforce laws against murder and arrest and try the perps…
Krane,
Joe is watching Ukraine…
… His son works for one of the largest energy companies there.
Keeping that conflict of interest in check
Biden son’s appointment to Ukraine gas company raises no conflict of interest, White House says
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/white-house-denies-conflict-hunter-biden-article-1.1791465
Squeeky
That ‘s how this latest dustup started didn ‘t it???? The Gazans shot first???
= = =
Incorrect.
A Trail of Clues Leading to Victims and Heartbreak
Israeli Teenagers Found Dead; Hamas Under Pressure
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/02/world/middleeast/details-emerge-in-deaths-of-israeli-teenagers.html
What you’re attempting to do is legitimize excessive use of brute force to exact a retribution upon a nation of people so as to carry out an extermination… er… elimination regime. You can sit there and rationalize it all you want.
Then explain to us why Obama doesn’t drone Detroit with all it’s murderers running rampant on the streets… You know, to bring a sense of peace to the city.
I’ll wait for your response…
For a colonial settler state like Israel to allow the aggrieved and sullen indigines whose land they have confiscated to remain is an open invitation to terrorism.
Israel desperately needs a Final Solution to The Palestinian Question.
Well, to paraphrase the drug rehab rejoinder, “the Gazans haven ‘t been hurt enough yet.” Maybe when they have been, they”ll quit firing missiles at Israel. That ‘s how this latest dustup started didn ‘t it???? The Gazans shot first??? Because that don ‘t seem to matter to some folks here.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Not to far off topic…..Guess where the commander and chief is tonight?
July 17, President Barack Obama is traveling to New York City Thursday for two campaign fundraising events during a national transportation tour. Came in during evening rush hour.
Cocktails, eats and money. Shut off the cell phone and have it rollover to Joe Biden. Has anyone seen Joe? Joe, are you out there?
https://twitter.com/davidcnswanson/statuses/489839737482407936
https://twitter.com/davidcnswanson/statuses/489393516917694464
BC,
“I and the public know, what all schoolchildren learn;
Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.”
So you’re saying it is circular and infinite; that Israel will find the only conclusive solution is to quit the land and return it to its rightful and only owners, make the Palestinians whole again and eliminate the ill will (i.e. evil) right?
That would be a solution and it makes real good sense, I mean there is logic to it, right?
Israel gives the Palestinians their land back.
Everybody goes back to their own country (or state of assimilation as the case may be) and they’re all happy again.
Sounds good. Let’s all do it.
Geez! I just thought of something. People going home could replace war.
Yeah! The biological bipeds of identical plumages are gregarious and that has a certain calming effect.
Let’s promulgate that.