SAD IRONY: children who were abused have a propensity to become abusers, and thus the misery proceeds into the future. Similarly, the survivors of the Holocaust have been working over the poor Palestinians in Gaza. The Israelis have been mendacious, to say the least, and today's web allows spin creation that's never been seen before.
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| The Iron Dome defense system fires to intercept incoming missiles from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod. |
Juan Cole has a site, Informed Comment, where he lists the Top Ten Myths about Israeli Attack on Gaza, which sums up the state of things. The Israeli response to the Palestinian rocket attacks will fail in the long term, if only because the Israelis are seen as oppressors, because the Palestinian rocket attacks seem puny in comparison to the Godzilla-level Israeli response. Sorta like the Kaiser's feldgrau going through Belgium in 1914 got bad press. It's a 2GW solution to a 4GW problem, which means it's no solution.
Perhaps Egypt can make something happen within the next 72 hours, in the way of a cease-fire. Hamas might be ready to deal, as the imminent demise of the Syrian régime might result in a severe reduction in the supply of money and arms.
An intersesting way to treat someone you're supposed to be in the middle of having peace talks and negotiating a truce with, eh?
ReplyDeleteThat incidentally is what an article in Haaretz now claims the IDF was no more than pretending to do simply to lure Jabari into a position where they could murder him and that's precisely what they did.
He was either on his way to or had just left one of those meetings with the go-between the IDF had asked to offer Jabari their terms for a truce and a ceasefire and as you can tell from this video they were simply waiting for him to reach the point they had selected to do it.
That the video is out there in the public so soon afterwards can only mean that they are are actually proud of what they've done.
That well-know Israeli peace activist invited to the go-between actually believed their intentions were to stop anymore unnecessary bloodshed and agreed to find and give those terms to Jabari and forward back his response.
He too has been most egregiously duped and victimized and made to be a party to the very thing he's dedicated so much time and effort to stop.
I suppose the IDF is pleased and proud as punch about that too.
It seems rather fruitless to believe or trust the IDF or the Israeli govenment on anything they have to say.
They make-up their own rules as they go and have one set for themselves and a very different set that apply to anyone else.
Were the situations reversed the media and public outrage against Hamas if it had been as decietfull and vicious in carrying out such an unspeakable assasination against an Israeli government official under such a pretext would
have made headlines in every newspaper and on news source on the web.
The Israeli's aren't the only ones that have a double standard and it's about time people everywhere begin to ask themselves why that too is simply being allowed to happen and who is really responsible for it?
A most excellent comment, Silverfox.
ReplyDeleteUnlike the Taliban, the Hamas government was elected and the IDF targeted and assassinated a government official (and even more tragic, members of his family). Hamas came into power thanks to the Israeli push to make the PLO irrelevant/corrupt and they succeeded. Now that Hamas is in power, they have to identify them as terrorists and basically cajole many western powers to do the same.
It's a pathetic situation. The Palestinians can't do anything that is considered a legitimate response to the genocidal attacks they suffer day in and day out.
Their few rockets, signs of their desperate people saying we will not lie down and surrender, is viewed as a being the equivalent of threatening Israel's safety is absurd. The air strikes have taken over 90 lives, many of them children, compared to 3 Israeli casualties.
I nearly chocked when I heard a CBC radio interview with a Canadian woman living in Israel for the past few years. She was so horrified that she didn't feel safe leaving her home to buy milk for her morning coffee. I was gobsmacked by the total disconnect that the people in Gaza have been living without free flowing goods or even basic services like electricity for so long and that she should feel like her life was so terribly threatened. Plus, she is not trapped there and could easily fly back to Canada if her life became so inconvenient.