Israeli Agitprop
Having spent years reading propaganda and dealing with military and police euphemisms, allow me translate some of what is coming from Israeli and Hedgemony spokesweasels:
We are targeting “uniformed Hamas forces”. That would be cops, firemen, and postal workers.
We are targeting “Hamas buildings”. As the largest social services provider in Gaza, that would be daycare centers, schools, clinics, mosques, and community centers.
The Islamic University trained the people who built the rockets attacking Israel. They taught physics and chemistry classes in the science building.
The University was a meeting place for Hamas. Some people in Hamas went to that University.
We are targeting Hamas field agents. That would be local officials, like mayors and city councils.
Soon they will talk about “military support facilities”. Those are roads, bridges, and public utilities.
This is not going to help Israel in any meaningful way, has already gotten 5 Israelis killed with the response from forces in Gaza, and shows that the Israeli government and military have learned nothing from getting their butts kicked by Hezbollah in Lebanon. This doesn’t strengthen Israel, it endangers it. Hamas will survive, but the same may not be true of Mabarak in Egypt, whose government is under immense pressure because of the Israeli action. Turkey may be forced by its people to break all ties with Israel. Europe may restrict relations.
The Israeli leaders are acting in panic to their own elections and the inauguration of Barack Obama. Other nations now know the Israeli Defense Forces can be beaten, which is not good news for Israel. The Arab street has been refocused on Palestine, which is not good news for a lot of Arab and Muslim leaders. The only winner will be Iran, which has been a steadfast supporter of Hamas, and that is not good news for a whole lot of countries, the US included.
9 comments
Don’t mean to pull out this hoary old chestnut, but what will they call it when they just decide to ethnically cleanse the area?
Obviously the “Final Solution” is not available, and “urban revitalization” is in use in New Orleans, so they’ll probably say that they are establishing a “demilitarized security zone”.
your translations would be funny if they weren’t so true.
i did laugh when i got to they taught chemistry and physics…, those having been my favorite subjects in school, but yeah, hamas is the only provider of social services for a significant number of palestinians.
they dress funny, they talk funny, and their prophets all have funny names, but just like the rest of us, they too want food, water, clothing, shelter, schools, hospitals, and freedom from oppression. you’d think this wouldn’t be a difficult concept for westerners to grasp, but apparently it is.
But you must remember, Palestinians are not people to the majority of Israelis. Palestinians are untermenschen, unseemly mud people, not real people.
The only question in my mind is: Genocide, or ethnic cleansing? Israel is going to take one of those two actions regarding the Gaza Strip. Which one shall it be? They’ve tried slow genocide, but the Palestinians breed too fast for that to work. Fast genocide would be… messy. Ethnic cleansing might work — Hamas already did part of the job by bulldozing gaps through the border with Egypt, if Israel sent in an armored column and removed the remainder of those fortifications then sent the armored column back to the other end of the Gaza Strip and started shoving everybody that way with live ammo, they could clear the Strip fairly quickly. Of course that would also involve a bit of genocide since not everybody would voluntarily leave, but so it goes.
And the morality of all of this? Well. Let us not discuss that, because if we discuss the morality of ethnic cleansing or genocide when Jews are doing it, then we’re anti-Semitic. It’s only allowed to discuss the morality of ethnic cleansing or genocide when non-Jews are doing it.
– Badtux the Cynical Penguin
What the Israelis are doing is going to have exactly the same effect as the way the US has dealt with Cuba – nasty people are going to stay in power because of stupid policies.
Hipparchia, I’m just amazed at all of the media acceptance of this garbage. There are impartial observers in Gaza who are reporting what’s happening, but the Israelis keep on spinning.
What you say is too true, Badtux. It is exaggerated, but, unfortunately, not all that much. The Israeli elite are Europeans, and look upon the people that surround them as primitives. They refuse to make the compromises necessary to live in a desert. They keep trying to turn Israel into the Polish plain, and it won’t work.
The interesting thing to see is what will happen once the current Russian majority takes over from the European minority as the leaders of Israel. You might be better suited than me to speculate as to what this will do to the psyche of the Israeli leadership. Russians tend to be rather gloomy and paranoid and prone to the use of blunt force as the solution to sticky ethnic problems, how does that contrast with the current Israeli leadership? More of the same, or quantitatively different?
– Badtux the Demographics Penguin
Right now they, the Russians, have merged their separate party with the Likud, so they will follow the hard line of the Likud/AIPAC faction. Given the automatic distrust of the Soviets for Jews, the Russian Jews have lived under oppression a lot longer than other groups, and it is still fresh in their minds.
Russians became confirmed xenophobes since being overwhelmed by the Mongol Horde, and that trait has been reinforced by history.
Look to Bibi Netanyahu, the current leader of Likud, and his statements of paranoia and reliance on force. The Russians will fit in with him.
Understand that a major group will be passive and vote the way they are told, but those that chose politics, will be very much in the Netanyahu mold, which promises nothing good for Israel or the Middle East.
Your post and all the comments are quite informative. I had heard bits and pieces on the radio, but not in great depth. Thank you.
OWL, I just hope that people will start looking at the reality of situation, and stop automatically backing one side or the other. There are bad people on both sides, but almost everyone who gets killed or wounded on either side is an innocent bystander. This is madness.