qana's kids
the continuing destruction of lebanon and its people (especially children) surpasses my understanding and leaves me wanting for words to express my outrage, my sadness, my despair (and from a distance, yes). how can anyone possibly countenance such shameful action as israel continues to pursue? how can anyone possibly "spin" these despicable acts as if they constitute self-defense? the mind boggles, the heart dips.
chickens will come home to roost, in droves, and we who are complicit will have little to say in our own defense. where are the anti-zionist jewish voices? where are the american voices against our aiding and abetting of this murderous regime (never mind our own, of course)? what will it take to convince the world to step in and put an end to such atrocities?
these remain essential reading:
angryarab
juancole
leninology
will you help amplify their analyses?
posted by wayne&wax @ 12:02 PM
9 Comments:
DAG, i get enough pernicious israeli propaganda about hezbollah's "human shields" from the new york times. i don't need you to rehearse it here.
"unprovoked attack" -- that's a good one. c'mon: there's been no end of provocation in the last thirty-nine years of illegal, ruthless occupation, never mind the more recent history (say, since '82) of attacks on lebanon.
you can try to make this a "muslim"/"jew" issue, but that's a ruse and a distortion, as is israel's claim to represent world jewry. i find it utterly stupefying that anyone could argue that israel cares in the least for civilian, non-israeli casualties. the events of the last two weeks have shown the truth to the world, whether or not it's on CNN. i don't understand how you -- or anyone, "neo-con" or not -- can countenance such deadly, dastardly collective punishment.
fairly bracing, fairly fair:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,,1833931,00.html
Surely it wouldnt matter if Hezbo 'Hide among civilians' anyway (lets just ignore the fact that they cant launch rockets from houses or heavily built up areas without killing themselves) because according to the Israeli Justice Minister Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon:
"These places are not villages. They are military bases in which Hezbollah people are hiding and from which they are operating....
All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah"
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060725/Israel_lebanon_fighting_060727/20060727?hub=CTVNewsAt11
I wonder if DAG would agree with Hizbollah taking the same position on civilians in Northern Israel, many of whom are reservists in the IDF. By his logic they are all legitimate targets.
BTW - there are doubts as to whether the original attack and capture even took place in Israel at all. Not that it makes an difference to the unstoppable Hasbara machine and its mindless conscripts.
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1154337814.html
http://europe.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/33270
Whatever Wayne, you complain about what israel is doing but really who are you to talk especially living in Boston.
What do you think HZ is doing shooting candy toward Israel? Give me break. just because not that many Israeli didnt die yet doesn't mean it couldnt happen. Just few days HZ shot at hospital in Israel - whats that? I guess that didnt get into your news.
What you think happen in war, people die, it sad nobody wants it. I dont think anybody in the Israeli army wanted civilian death. But again if you keep shooting at Israel - what you expect the to take it.
I like to see what happens if your next door neighbor started throwing rocks at your windows, or breaking into your house. How would you feel about that? You call the police and nobody cares. Would you sit there and keep to see what he does next? What happen if he went after your family would you still accept that?
Its so easy to talk when you live here but its different story over there.
I guess the main problem its you mentality of not understanding what a typical Israeli experience since the birth of Israel. Maybe you should try living there and see how it feels.
where to start? i can't spend too much time debunking the same ol' stuff here, but here goes...
i did acknowledge the distance between here and there, but only to recognize how helpless i feel to stop this state-sanctioned, murderous terror.
i don't know how the IDF could not want civilian death if they use precision bombs to kill dozens and dozens and hundreds and hundreds of civilians. i don't see that hezbollah targets civilians any more or less than israel; they've just got inferior weaponry. give hizbollah f-16s and you couldn't even brand them terrorists anymore: they'd be war criminals, plain and simple -- like those commanding the israeli military. (and i'm not denying that hezbollah are committing crimes against humanity and crimes of war, but israel hardly has a high horse to sit upon here.)
if my neighbor were harassing me or my family (way to go for the guts! are they mexican neighbors?), i would hope that the law would protect me, but i would not hold out such hope if i myself never respected the law.
finally, i would never live in israel, so i can't really respond to your last point. all i'll say is that it's striking you don't see the irony in your statement: try understanding the typical palestinian experience since the birth of israel, and then we can talk about the typical israeli experience since the birth of israel.
I like to see what happens if your next door neighbor started throwing rocks at your windows, or breaking into your house. How would you feel about that?
Would this be the same house that you stole from your next door neighbours brother 40 years ago, and in which you now force his in-laws to live in the basement, occassionally allowing them food and water whilst screaming abuse at them and kicking them in the head?
Israeli cries of 'he started it' are beyond a joke. The root cause of all this is of course the illegal occupation of Palestine. Hezbollah have their own unsavoury motives, sure but the way to stop this conflict once and for all is to offer justice and self-determination to the people they've dispossesed and brutalised, thereby removing the wind that fills the sails of extremists in the Arab and Muslim world.
Or of course you could just keep kicking the shit out of them until payback comes along in the form of a nuclear atttack of some kind.
Israel can win as many wars as it wants, but it can lose only once...
I'm an American Jew. Am I anti-Zionist? I'm not sure I know what that means for me (and unfortunately I don't have time at the moment to expand that thought). I sure as shit feel sick when I look at pictures of dead children. The way I feel right now, in terms of this specific moment, and this is what I say to anyone I find myself in conversation with: the interesting moment came when Hamas won the elections. When they were immediately shut out of the legitimate political world without question, I feel that the inevitability of the current situation was sealed, one way or another, sooner or later. That was the moment where those carrying the badges, using their power to grant themselves legitimacy any which way they please, could have decided to turn away from war, towards something new, unpredictable, risky, something that would've required the use of their brains rather than their firepower. That moment passed as we all knew it would, because apparently the assholes who've managed to put themselves in office don't have what it takes to actually solve this problem. And we're back to war. And we know how Israel fights.
As an American Jew, with an upbringing I have no right to complain about, with a grandmother who fled Germany, a family that does not share my opinions by and large, and a brain in my head that does not want to accept what staunch Zionists claim is the only way, it gets very claustrophobic when I try to reason through it all. There are reflexive thought processes, as we all know, that get built into one over time- how do I know when my response is right or wrong? Dead children, that's how I know.
Anti-Zionist? I don't fucking know- what were my other options? Serious question.
i sure don't know the answer, JDS, though i appreciate you sharing your perspective. i have many friends in your shoes, and i only hope that new generations of jews will find ways to be jewish without supporting the israeli regime. there's no reason that jewishness and zionism need be conflated -- that's like conflating christianity and neo-conservatism -- but israel has succeeded in making this discursive/emotional link. i think, at the least, you should continue to converse with your family and friends.
the only way out of this mess, it would seem, is a serious redress of the very legitimate gripes of palestinians and lebanese, among others, and as you note, that avenue seems anathema to the powers that be (and, boy, do they be powerful).
Feeling sick about it all too, wayne.
And as usual, the tone of the debate infuriates and alienates. It apparently can't be said enough that israel does not equal all jews, everywhere.
it's strange being in Germany right now, because I know several germans who say they feel they can't criticize Israel because of their own German past.. kind of a head trip.
What I get out of it too is that a lot of this comes from Europe's own failure to deal with the Jews after WWII. Seems like Europe was only too happy to export the remaining Jews to the Middle East, rather than have to deal with real integration and respect for Jews postwar.
I don't see nationalism as solving any problems, especially when it is tied to exclusive control of land and livelihoods. The real problem is constructing pluralist societies.
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