Comments on: I Know It When I See It

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 04:40:15 +0000

I don’t like Hamas on a lot of levels, but they have almost no power to change anything beyond the control of some neighborhoods. They came to power by being less corrupt than other parties and supplying some basic social services. They don’t have access to cash anymore, and they can’t buy too much with the cash they do have. Since most countries and groups refuse to talk to them, their actual influence over events is nil. Hamas has become an Israeli excuse, and no longer a participant in the incursion.

As the Russians borrowed many government terms from the Germans, both Hilter and Stalin called them lager [the -lag in Gulag]. The parallels in Gaza are obvious. Instead of ‘bathhouses’ severely limited medical care, and slow starvation are being used.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 02:50:36 +0000

Ah yes, concentration camps. We all know how that movie ends, right?

By: NTodd

NTodd — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 02:08:11 +0000

I’m not certain that Gaza has much of a government left

Yeah, that’s why I said ‘political.’ I haven’t been over there since ’09, so I don’t know much about the realities of governance at this point, but Hamas is still a political entity and acts pretty damned counterproductively. Just imagine if they were effective and could actually pose a threat to Israel’s existence!

Gaza is a huge concentration camp.

Well, when you put it that way, it sounds bad.

“A little human compassion.”

– Snake Plissken

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 04:44:34 +0000

I’m not certain that Gaza has much of a government left, NTodd, since during the last IDF attack the postal workers and traffic police were bombed out of existence, and the government has no money. It has been years since Hamas has had a credible security force to attempt to control the fringe groups primarily responsible for the rocket attacks. The IDF supplies all of the high explosives needed for the rockets.

Gaza is a huge concentration camp.

Badtux, I know that the major influx of Soviet “Jews” after the fall of the Soviet Union tilted the political landscape significantly to the right. Many of the coalition parties in the current government are primarily parties made up of those immigrants. Wealthy American Jews have taken over the print media and driven the center and left-wing papers out of business by giving their papers away, rather than selling them.

Increasingly, the more liberal Israelis who can are migrating to get away from the mess that Israel has become. Given the low birthrate among the educated Israelis and the the high rates among the Ultra-Orthodox and Arabs, they were assured of minority status going forward, so there is no future for them in Israel.

Israel won’t exist in 2100 as it is rotting from within. It has lost its purpose and its soul.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 23:34:06 +0000

Bryan, I've been looking at the survey data of Israeli public attitudes published by Haaretz (most of which, alas, is behind a paywall, albeit a leaky paywall). When 67% of Israelis believe that Israel is an apartheid state and don't have a problem with that, it's not "just the government". There is something that has gone really wrong in the Israeli psyche over the past couple of decades, and I'm not sure what it is, but it's repulsing a lot of the Diaspora without whom Israel cannot continue to exist, nevermind non-Jews.

By: NTodd

NTodd — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 23:16:42 +0000

I think both political sides are irrational. But the balance of blame is on the Israeli government, with their collective punishment and the completely asymmetrical outcomes of their genocidal policies.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 05:19:52 +0000

I should be clearer and represent the real problem with Israel, the policies of the current ruling coalition. The Likudniks lead it, but their plurality was even smaller than that of Hamas, and they have brought in all of the extreme right-wing parties to create a majority in parliament. They have to continue to back the welfare payments and military exemptions of the ultra-Orthodox to maintain their ruling majority, and adopt the ethnic cleansing attitude of the right-wing fringe.

The only obvious reason for this incursion is to boost their flagging support in the polls, which it has accomplished. There is no other reason that really suggests itself, and killing 1300 Palestinians would seem to be nothing more than a photo op for the ruling coalition. No one knows what the Israeli people really think, because censorship is always imposed during these attacks.

If you complain about the actions of the Israeli government you are attacked as a Nazi. The Israeli government never provides proof of any of its claims, and deflects criticism by invoking national security and pointing to the rockets as justification for everything.

Yes, Steve, a lot of Jews oppose what the government of Israel is doing, but the media won’t give them access to a microphone or time on the news.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 20:08:42 +0000

Abraham Lipschutz is dead, as of a couple months ago. He lived into his mid-nineties; he was in Europe in W.W. II, risking life and limb in the Netherlands equivalent of the underground railroad, running German Jews through the lines and ultimately out of harm’s way. Abi would be the first to admit he was scared sh!tless doing that, but it had to be done.

I knew Abi because he was married to Isabelle Ganz, who led one of the musical groups I performed with. But Abi would have been an admired friend of mine even if I’d never known and worked with Isabelle, because Abi was a supporter of the notion of modern Israel… and a vocal opponent of the unjustified violence that nation had begun to commit against its neighbors in Abi’s last few decades. He was not shy about reminding anyone… Jewish or otherwise, American or European… that Israel was worthwhile not for the violence it could inflict on Arabs but because it was the homeland of several peoples with roots extending back time out of mind.

One more soul who did what he could to put brakes on the needless assaults is gone from our midst…

By: Badtux

Badtux — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 07:45:32 +0000

Regarding Israeli goals, I’ve been trying to figure that out and been totally stumped. There’s no rational reason for what they’re doing. It’s not ethnic cleansing because they’re not letting the Palestinians leave in boats. It’s not genocide because they could do that without putting their own troops in the way of Palestinian fire by simply bombing Gaza flat then completely and totally sealing the border until everybody left alive has starved to death or died of thirst. The only way they can stop the rockets is occupation, but that then makes them an occupying power responsible for the health and wellbeing of what they consider to be untermenschen, filthy cockroaches, and they don’t want to be in that position. That leaves irrational reasons, religious reasons, reasons of Israeli politics where they are trying to gin up support for a government that was losing popularity, … none of which is worth a single human life. But since they don’t consider Palestinians to be human… well.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 07:36:29 +0000

Actually, if you read Haaretz or The Guardian (which is where the Haaretz guys publish when they’re censored by the Israeli government, which happens on a regular basis), you’ll find out that the Israeli government knew within 24 hours that a) the three Israeli teens were dead, b) who it was who did the deed, and c) that the three people who did the deed were Palestinian, but *not* members of Hamas, they were apparently the Palestinian equivalent of rednecks who saw some Jews walking by and decided that today was a good day for a lynching.

Yet the Israeli government censored this information from their newspapers until after the war had already started, instead allowing fury against Hamas to be whipped up in an act Goebbels would have approved, then once the Israeli population was properly wound up like a pit bull slathering at the mouth for the kill, pointed them at Gaza and said “Kill! Kill!”. And they did.

What is especially disturbing is that the Israelis clearly don’t see Palestinians as being human. In their eyes, Palestinians are merely cockroaches to be exterminated. It’s so bad that a professor who merely implied that Palestinians might be human is under fire and may lose his job for sending an email that re-scheduled exams because of the unpleasantness that didn’t mention Palestinians by name but expressed hope that none of the students were amongst those affected by the hundreds killed and thousands homeless or displaced. It’s disgusting, and what’s even more disgusting is that there’s a significant number of Americans who don’t see a problem with us supporting that kind of blatant racism. Yes, Israel has a right to self defense. But this has never been about self defense, any more than Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland after ginning up a fake border incursion was about self defense…