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.
Pete, There is corroborative evidence that the Russian rebels shot it down, thinking it was a Ukraine cargo plane. It is not dispositive, but good corroboration @ this point. You are a loyal curmudgeon, trying to stick up for your buddy. But, dogs should not be digging their own holes like you did @ 3:30 last night. We’re back to reality, most people are now reading the facts, and not being snarky on false premises like “shoulder fired missiles.” Let’s just keep learning the facts and debate on substance. Chuck took a big step in that direction. You need to do the same. Facts should always trump emotion.
Chuck, Good to see you did some homework.
The problem I have with blaming it on the Russians doing this by mistake is that the missile battery would have to know the speed, and altitude of MH 17 which would clearly indicate it was not Ukrainian at all since it was so close to the border. I get upset when ATC leaves me at the high altitudes within 100 miles of my destination and I have to really dive to get down to land. So the altitude alone would indicate the plane was not going to land nearby. It would also be too low for a recon flight. The speed and altitude would indicate it was a jet, not a turboprop getting ready to drop in for resupply mission since there were no Ukrainian military in that region.
Of course, they could have been drunk too like when a US Army 105 battery in Vietnam had a beer bash one night and thought it would be fun to fire off some rounds into the jungle. The problem was that the shells landed on a US unit that was out in the not so empty jungle and killed a bunch of GIs. So all in all, I think we will have to wait and see what the evidence is, and judge the veracity of that evidence. It is way too early to be banging the war drums as many of the folks here want to do.
Darren, While all agree that it was a BUK system, it remains to be seen whose system it was that did the actual shootdown. My take is that it was more than likely the fascist units of the Ukrainian military who shot the plane down. They have motive, means, and opportunity. The Russians have the means, and opportunity, but they have a NEGATIVE motive for doing that. Of course, having no motive never stopped idiots in war, so one cannot completely rule out that the Russian did it either. The Russians are known for their ineptness in many realms. They had one of their most embarrassing OOPS moment in Afghanistan when they executed the President who asked them into the country in the first place. So one cannot rule them out entirely.
I doubt that it was the pro-Russian rebels since the Russians know that once they go to them, they lose all control of the weapons. The CIA had their dumbest moment when they gave Stinger missiles to Bin Laden and his fellow fighters in Afghanistan. After the Russian left, the CIA had a buy back program to get the remaining missiles back under US control. Of course, they never did get many of them back, until TWA 800 when the Iranians returned the favor of Reagan shooting down their Airbus. So I doubt that the Russians did this one. Using FAUX news or other phony journalists with tales of admission of guilt is not proof at all. FAUX will at some point dress up a staffer in Russian uniform to say that he was the one who ordered the shooting. We already have one instant in which the news media got caught in bogus news stories when they said that the clips of Russian officers being in the Ukraine were actually in Russia. A more convincing bit of evidence will be the serial numbers from the rocket data plate. Another way to go at this would be to show that the Russians had a positive incentive to shoot down this poor plane, crew and pax. Come up with that, and you will be starting to make some sense.
yes, one radar truck feeding info to multiple launch vehicles not one guy with a stove pipe or a single truck with 40 tubes.
as of right now they know next to nothing about what or who brought the aircraft down, yet everyone is pointing fingers and discussing (using that word loosely) what should be done about it.
lets get the facts first and go from there.
Pete,
The latest “conventional wisdom” from the conflict zone says the missile came from the Buk System. Probably armed with either SA-11 or SA-20 missiles. The Buk System is a complete mobile system of missiles, requiring multiple vehicles. The early models were used in Vietnam, and I lost a good friend to one on 30 September 1965. His F-4 was hit by an early version, the SA-2, which was deployed in country in April 1965.
The Buk System has a cost of about €500 million each, which converts to $675 million USD. Both the Ukraine and Russian military have them. If accident investigators are allowed to study the wreckage of the downed airliner without interference, they may be able to find pieces of the missile which would confirm what is was, and possibly where it came from. The thing about forensic science is the smart thing to do is wait for the evidence before coming to a conclusion, not a rush to judgement. Having said that, it makes sense that it was a Buk System crew that shot down the plane.
Here is a brief video of the Buk System being demonstrated. The missiles now have an altitude range to over 70,000 feet, greater than the ones used in Vietnam. You can see this is not an operation for amateurs.
Either the Russians or their proxies.
Nick Spinelli
These are NOT SHOULDER fired missiles the Russians have provided the rebels. They are BM 21 Grad missiles fired from mobile missile launcher machinery. Have you read ANYTHING about this, old fly boy? Your arrogance is merging w/ your ignorance on this topic, Chucky, and you are looking REAL BAD! First rule of getting out of a hole, STOP DIGGING and start READING.
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a BM-21 Grad is an artillery rocket launcher not a SAM.
while this rocket launcher might work well for an aircraft on a runway or a revetment, it would be useless for one in flight.
stop digging now.
mespo,
Every “decider” needs a golf day…
Randy jet:
The old shibboleth distinction!
The Great Tribulation is about to begin!
And many of its Arab inhabitants immigrated within the past 100 years for jobs.
Contrary to Palestine, the US actually is a country. Wheras Palestine was a region under control of the Ottoman Empire, then the British Empire, and then split up between Jordan (Arab) and Israel (Jewish.)
There is neither a Palestinian language nor a dialect.
Of course I am familiar with the Bedouins, a nomadic people. What does that have to do with Palestine being a region (mostly in Jordan) rather than a state, Arab migration towards better performing economies, and the refusal to accept a Jewish state in the Middle East? Why not bring up the Pushtun?
Karen, I suggest you go a look up some facts about Arabic and in FACT you will find that there are over 26 dialects of Arabic. There are TWO dialects for Jerusalem Palestinian Arabic, and another for West Bank or rural Arabic in that area. I guess you would not consider Canadians to be a separate culture or nationality then since we look and sound exactly alike with the slight exception of Eh.
OK, Johnson/Warren covered up JFK, the Clintons covered up Flight 800 (was there ever another spontaneous fuel tank explosion or hot tarmacs?) and Putin is covering up Flight 17.
What’s new?
The pilots were intelligent and went to the best schools and were brilliant and right and were better than anyone else and now they are DEAD RIGHT! They were superior and simultaneously incapable of making the correct decision. The pilot deviated (or failed to deviate away from) over a known combat zone. I have a question. What kind of pilots does Malaysian Air hire?
Like many of the attorneys on this site, the Malaysian Air pilots were “pennywise and pound foolish.” American attorneys have flown the plane of the Founders into the ground. Those attorneys know the complexity of the discipline, precedents and case law, but they have absolutely no grasp of the effect the final law “product” was intended to have and the intent and spirit of the Preamble, Constitution and Bill of Rights, even when presented with the contextual words of the Founders literally – freedom, self-reliance and not a modicum of governmental control of business/economy or redistribution. In the end, the wrong result is produced.
The American Founders ended up with the product of the fatally flawed mental machinations of Karl Marx after they threw off the bonds of submission to a monarch and obtained the “blessings of liberty” which are not a dictatorship of the proletariat, striking teachers with “comparable pay” for all other governmental workers, the welfare state, obamacare, complete redistribution and a government-run economy.
The Founders lived the best example of what they wrote – freedom and self-reliance – but it has all been perverted by obsessive, compulsive, biased, arbitrary and overzealous lawsmiths.
Just the facts, ma’am.
Just the words of the Founders, Counselors.
P.S. Does any one of you understand that gold-backed currency is a simple “utility” like water and electricity? Did Bernie Madoff’s relatives get you on that one?
Here is a very brief history of “Palestine,” which was a region, not a country. In fact, Jordan covers most of what was previously considered the region of Palestine. So Jordan IS Arab Palestine.
There is no Palestinian language, no separate culture. In fact, prior to about 100 years ago, what is now Israel was described as “sparsely populated.” The economic boom that accompanied the British Mandate in 1913 to create a Jewish homeland attracted Arabs to the “Palestinian” region, which they then laid claim to on a purely religious ground. Because there is no Palestinian culture. They are indistinguishable from other Arab communities from which, in fact, most of them migrated from within the past 100 years.
All of this fighting is because the Muslims will never accept a non-Mulsim country in the Middle East. Period. No concessions, no diplomacy, nothing will convince them to accept Israel as a Jewish state. So this is all pointless. Separate two groups when they cannot get along, or you’ll just keep wasting your time.
http://www.science.co.il/History-Palestine.php
Karen, I guess you have never heard of Bedoiuns. Or you have never heard of the differences between Arabic spoken in many different dialects throughout the Mideast. I guess you will find no differences between Canadians and Americans too. So we should simply move to Canada if Mexico reconquers the US Southwest. Right?
Guys:
The region used to be part of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled warring factions with an iron fist. Great Britain arbitrarily drew lines on a map to create Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, etc. And sometimes those lines didn’t sit well with the people living there.
And as for Palestinians’ territorial rights: They, like every other population, migrated from lower economic to higher economic value regions. Population figures from the Ottoman Empire confirm that in 1905, as the economy improved, about 1/3 of the Arab Palestinians’ growth was due to immigration, both legal and illegal. Again, when Great Britain poured Crown treasure into Israel, there was a corresponding boom in Arab immigration. The incessant fighting between Arabs and Jews with the formation of Israel, and a small militant Nationalist faction of Israelis, also contributed to a brief Arab Palestinian outpouring. But a great many of the Arab Palestinians who claim ownership of Israel are, in fact, immigrants who arrived within the past 100 years or so.
THE PURPOSE OF WARS ARE TO ENRICH THE ELITES AND FORCE THE STATES OR COUNTRIES INTO SUBMISSION.along with stealing the natural resources of said countries or states that is it and all nothing more or less. humanity will never accept that truth they would rather die and admit or accept the truth of it all will they ever find the atu waa ? maybe but HUMANity doesnt care or it cares about is the lies its told from beginning to end. and all that really matters is humanity is allowed to keep living in a rose colored world where history is what they are told it is. laws are bad for minorities and excellent for others. drugs are bad bad bad unless given to them by the pharma industry. muslims are savages while jews are the greatest i mean hey their bloodline is pure right?
They are the chosen ones according to? oh yea fanatical clerics and po lie trickers but hey they have only told us the truth from the beginning and it doesnt matter how many politicians, scientist and ex corporation workers have attempted to tell us the truth we are only going to listen to the uber rich who no longer even pretend to be a goverment they are telling the people outright now they are a corporation and the people are their slaves but it would behoove us to NOT BELIEVE IN THE BS THEY SPEW AT US. but go find out the truth on our own.. isnt that right snowden? and channing? along with many others
hip hip hooray world war three has begun and the fema trains are ready and waiting for anyone who dares oppose the corporation.
Like anyone seeking the truth I look for contrary reports. PRAVDA is reporting the Malaysian jetliner was “most likely” shot down by Ukrainian troops. But, even Pravda didn’t call them fascists as the brave Ukrainians have despicably been called here.