Israel

Rog wrote:

I prefer to support no genocide. I would also prefer we didn't give billions of dollars and weapons to the terrorist state of Israel. If they are to be swallowed whole without our assistance then maybe its for the best. They seem to be little more than bloodthirsty savages anyway. Everybody the US helps evolves into a bully. Bin laden, Hussein, Noriega, Israel... etc

gen·o·cide (jěn'ə-sīd') Pronunciation Key
n. The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.

[Greek genos, race; see genə- in Indo-European roots + -cide.]
gen'o·cid'al (-sīd'l) adj., gen'o·cid'al·ly adv.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source

genocide
1944, apparently coined by Polish-born U.S. jurist Raphael Lemkin in his work "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe" [p.19], in reference to Nazi extermination of Jews, lit. "killing a tribe," from Gk. genos "race, kind" (see genus) + -cide, from L. -cidere "kill," comb. form of caedere "to cut, kill" (see concise). The proper formation would be *genticide.

Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001 Douglas Harper
Cite This Source

The Israeli's only wish to kill those who wish them harm. This is self defense. They may be heavy handed, but this is not genocide.
Certain Arabs, most notably Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran wish to eliminate the Jewish race. By not lending support to Israel you are supporting genocide.

Have you noticed that everybody that Russia helps evolves into a bully? Chavez, Castro. Power corrupts. You know this. Quit being silly.

Israels only wish is to be rid of the Palestinians once and for all. By your definitions that is genocide. when one is determining who is in the right here we must first consider the historical fact that they were "given" land that did not belong to them. They then decided it wasn't enough and have systematically expanded their reign of terror over that nations indigenous people. We did it to the Indians, which is probably why the Jews feel they should be able to as well.

You will have to give sources on this wish to be rid crap. Israel has shown a willingness to live in peace. It is the Palestinians who consistently break the peace. Israel reacts. Sometimes that reaction results in land changing hands. Had Palestine never attacked Israel, they never would have lost any land after 1948.

If one reviews the afore posted map it is quite clear that the Palestinians are being driven into the ocean by the Jews.

Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." – Moshe Dayan

Moshe Dayan was one of the founding fathers of the state of Israel. His political and military successors are certainly living up to his frightening advice. In retaliation for the capture of an Israeli soldier, a policy of collective punishment has deprived Gazans of food, medicine, electricity and their lives. Israel has invaded a sovereign nation, Lebanon, bombed the Beirut airport and cut the nation off from the rest of the world. “Nothing is safe in Lebanon, simple as that,” said Israeli General Dan Halutz.

Not only are the Lebanese being killed by Israeli bombs, but CNN won’t even mention it to their viewers. Anyone watching CNN or the other networks would think that Israel’s arms magically avoid hitting human beings. The rest of the corporate media join in reporting the party line, that Israel is threatened, endangered and entitled to keep killing Arabs.

Not only is the media guilty of sins of omission, but they are once again assisting the administration and Israel in spreading outright lies. It was inexcusable when the press spread the falsehood that Iran was involved in capturing soldiers at the Lebanese border. More inexcusable was the lie that the soldiers would be sent to Iran. No stone is ever left unturned in the effort to drum up support for war against Iran.

It is ironic that this latest bloodshed has taken place on the anniversary of Israel’s first foray into wars of aggression. On July 11, 1948 Colonel Moshe Dayan led a battalion in the attack on the town of Lydda. After a brief uprising, 250 died, nearly all Arabs. Beginning on July 12, 1948 Major Yitzhak Rabin ordered the expulsion en masse of the Arab populations in the towns of Lydda and al-Ramla.

The residents of al-Ramla had surrendered without incident. Neverthless they were driven to the front lines and ordered to start walking. For three days between 30,000 and 50,000 Arab civilians were expelled from their homes in the same manner, in 100 degree heat. The number who perished is unknown.

Those days 58 years ago were the beginning of what Palestinians call al-Nakba, “the catastrophe.” Al-Nakba continues to this day for Arabs unlucky enough to live near Israel.

Al-Nakba is unknown to all but a few in this country. Most Americans still foolishly ask, “Why do they hate us?,” or dismiss Arabs as crazed, violent people with no reason to be upset.

Pointing out that Israel sent thousands to die in the desert always results in an outpouring of invective peculiar to entitled groups. The charges are made as if by rote. Every critic is labeled an anti-Semite, or a terrorist sympathizer. We are endlessly told that Israel is America’s ally, and the only democracy in the Middle East.

Americans are permitted to be “anti” any nation on earth, but special scorn and punishment is heaped on anyone who dares express criticism of Israel, whose supporters are blatant in their demand that everyone either join the cheerleading or keep quiet. Israel insists on singling itself out to commit acts that are rejected by every other democracy on earth, yet mention of Israel’s killing of civilians is inevitably followed by a plaintive wail that Israel is being singled out for criticism.

The military industrial complex, neocons who publicly declared that Israel should be the only military power in the region, and right wing Christians who yearn for the rapture are the deciders. Politicians who have dared to defy Israel and its American supporters have all been targeted for political defeat. Facing an opponent financed by AIPAC is the price to pay for speaking up.

The Christian right has joined in the Israeli protection racket. They are far more right wing than they are Christian. Some believe that the rapture will come faster if Israel kills more people. Others think that Israel is anointed of God and should be allowed to do what it wants. They seem to forget the Old Testament prophets who never shrank from condemning Israel’s rulers. Doing the bidding of the powerful trumps anything they may have learned in Sunday school.

Israelis must end the occupation of Palestine. They must tear down the wall, remove settlements, free prisoners and make monetary restitution for the devastation of Palestine. Of course, the United States government would actually do that. The damage done with American permission will only be undone on our dime.

Secondly, Israel must join the Non Proliferation Treaty, as Iran has done, and submit to inspection of their arsenal containing between 100 and 300 nuclear warheads. The numbers of nukes are guesses because Israel neither denies nor confirms their existence.

If Israel will follow through on those actions it will have the support of most of the world and it will have true security instead of the security it now has. The security of a mad dog that terrorizes the neighborhood.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/192/192_freedom_rider_israels_terror.html

Mad rabid dog indeed.

"For thousands of years, we Jews have been nourished and sustained by a yearning for our historic land. I, like many others, was raised with a deep conviction that the day would never come when we would have to relinquish parts of the land of our forefathers. I believed, and to this day still believe, in our people's eternal and historic right to this entire land." --Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in an address to a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, May 24, 2006

In 1947, the United Nations arrogantly attempted to give away Palestine by floating the non-binding Resolution 181. Although the resolution was accepted by the General Assembly, it was not accepted by both parties, which was legally necessary for the General Assembly's recommendations to be implemented.

If it had been implemented it would have prepared the foundation for the creation in Palestine of an Arab state and a Jewish state. However, the Arab nations voted in a block against it and were joined by others. Altogether 13 nations, Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen voted against it. Ten nations, Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia abstained.

Following the rejection of the resolution by the Arabs, over 65,000 well-trained Zionist forces led by Jewish terrorist gangs -- Irgun, Stern, and others -- stormed Palestine armed with $12 million worth of armaments and were met by 25,000 Palestinian militia equipped with antiquated weapons, known as Al Nakba.

Following the take-over of Palestine, U.N. Resolution 194 mandated Israel to accept the Palestinian's right to return to their homes, and own up to the fact that "compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property." That too was ignored and Israel's legitimacy hung on it.

Later came the Six-Day-War (1967), which resulted in the Occupation -- the complete takeover of what remained of historic Palestine -- and the fulfillment of the Zionist claim to their so-called 2,000-year-old Biblical birthright.

http://english.ohmynews.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?menu=A11100&no=297051&rel_no=1&back_url=

I'm hoping that is enough to satisfy your request for links substantiating my belief that it is Israels stated objective to be rid of the Palestinians altogether.

Ridding a land of people does not necessarily equal genocide. Israel has offered to return a large amount of land to the Palestinians in exchange for peaceful co-existence. This offer was refused in favor of exterminating the Jewish race.

I ask the question again... If Britain designed a plan and the UN agreed and decided to give all of Kansas back to who was here 1000 years ago, and along with it, your homes would be leveled to make room for the new settlers, would you happily give everything you own away and move, or fight for it?

And to make matters worse, suppose 80% or more of those new settlers had no real ties to this land other than practicing the same religion as those who were once here, while you are the product of generations of Kansas residents. Should you be forced to give your land to someone whose ancestors never set foot upon it?

The first wrong done makes a big difference here. While the Israelis just flocked in as told they could, the Palestinians had claim to it first and as I see it, have the right to fight for it.

blackcommentator.com?

mikecc wrote:

blackcommentator.com?

i knew you'd like that.

lol, I guess you gotta get your news somewhere. You do know that the negro is just a tool of the jew.

mikecc wrote:

lol, I guess you gotta get your news somewhere. You do know that the negro is just a tool of the jew.

It would appear that we all are.

Is Hamas not some kind of bread??

No, it's this bean-dip type stuff... made out of chickpeas. Hippies really like it. I think it's kinda bland.

That's not so much hippies as just vegetarian enviro health nuts. Most of the hippies I knew liked chili dogs, burgers, and things swimmin in barbeque sauce.

Bighead wrote:

No, it's this bean-dip type stuff... made out of chickpeas. Hippies really like it. I think it's kinda bland.

Tastes great on schwarmas (sp)


Run to the hills

(harris)

White man came across the sea
He brought us pain and misery
He killed our tribes, he killed our creed
He took our game for his own need

We fought him hard we fought him well
Out on the plains we gave him hell
But many came too much for cree
Oh will we ever be set free?

Riding through dustclouds and barren wastes
Galloping hard on the plains
Chasing the redskins back to their holes
Fighting them at their own game
Murder for freedom a stab in the back
Women and children and cowards attack

Run to the hills run for your lives
Run to the hills run for your lives

Soldier blue on the barren wastes
Hunting and killing their game
Raping the women and wasting the men
The only good indians are tame
Selling them whisky and taking their gold
Enslaving the young and destroying the old

Run to the hills run for your lives
(repeat to end)

The American Indian and Palestinian issues have some definite parallels. Land was promised to both only to later have someone say we need more of your space. Both considered the aggressors for trying to take it back. Both considered unholy killers of innocents even though the invaders in both cases were guilty of plenty of atrocities. It tends to depend on what side of a line you stand on as to who the demons are.

By Mark Karlin, Editor and Publisher

Beneath the growing body count in Gaza, there is the underlying public relations battle as to who is the bigger victim: Israel or the Palestinians?

Cultures that wallow themselves in victimhood are ultimately doomed to self-destruction, as the spiraling descent into death that knows no end in Gaza evidences.

But we've seen it all before, most recently in the ill-fated IDF incursion in Lebanon.

Most Americans accept two basic premises: the State of Israel has the right to exist and the Palestinians have a right to a state of their own.

If you begin with this underlying goal, much can be understood.

There are minority contingents of Palestinians and Israelis who want either the destruction of Israel, on the one hand, or the denial of a Palestinian state on the other.

Hamas and Hezbollah are Islamic fundamentalists who don't represent the relatively secular Islamic Palestinians as a whole. Hamas came to power in a U.S. and Israeli approved election, largely because the residents of Gaza were fed up with the corruption of the PLO and also because Hamas, as does Hezbollah, had set up a shadow system of social services to the Palestinian population. But with Hamas's rise to power in Gaza came a fanatical political goal of destroying Israel. Hamas fortunately has not had the means to do it, largely because most Arab nation states see Islamic fundamentalists as a threat to their rule and ways of life. (Remember, Anwar Sadat was assassinated by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood for making peace with Israel.) So the Arab Sunni Hamas is left with the Shiite and Persian Iran as its key ally, although Iran has given Hamas just enough weaponry to be a nuisance to Israel, but not enough to seriously threaten its national security as a nation.

Hamas actually appears to have stopped, for nearly two years, the most horrifying and psychological devastaing threat to Israelis: suicide bombings. When Hamas rattles its tail nowadays, it shoots off homemade rockets in random and occasionally deadly attacks on Israelis in the south, where Gaza is located.

Meanwhile, in Israel the guy who is the Israeli counterpart of the American Neo-con movement, Benjamin Netanyahu, was leading in the polls in the upcoming Israeli Knesset election in February. Netanyahu does not want a two-state solution. In fact, he and his followers have done everything possible to undercut peace with the Palestinians, beginning with undermining the Oslo Accords. Just as Bush needed Osama bin Laden to achieve certain political and industrial-military complex goals, Netanyahu needs Hamas to crush hopes of a two-state solution and continue to subjugate the Palestinians as a non-people.

In this context, it is vital to remember that the warrior turned peace maker, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated by a right wing Israeli during a gigantic rally for peace in Tel Aviv. So a Prime Minister of Israel seeking an end to conflict is killed not by an Arab, but by an Israeli, and the assassin is revered as a hero by a segment of the fundamentalist Israeli religious right.

After 9/11, Bush was able to seize unConstitutional executive authority because the majority of Americans were traumatized by terror. That is just what happens in Israel when Palestinians attack. This pleases Netanyahu to no end, because he then sets the tone for a hardline policy. His two leading rivals for leadership are the heads of the Kadima and Labor parties. Because Netanyahu was so far ahead in the polls, they raced -- at the end of the ceasefire with Hamas and the beginning of the rocket attacks on Israel -- to launch an assault on Gaza, which had been in the planning stages for months. In fact, Ehud Barak (the former Israeli Prime Minister who almost signed off on a second-stage peace agreement with the Palestinians brokered by Bill Clinton in the last days of his presidency) -- currently Israeli Defense Minister -- has soared in the polls since the Gaza invasion. So, apparently has Tzipi Livni, who replaced Ehud Olmert as head of Kadima. (As in the British Parliament, Israelis vote for parties, who then form a coalition to elect the Prime Minister, who is generally the head of the party with the largest number of Knesset seats.)

Given a couple years of peace, the large majority of Israelis and Palestinians would favor -- and have in the lulls in terrorist attacks on Israel and Israeli counter-attacks on Palestinians -- peace and a two-state solution. But there are significant minorities on both sides who want to sabotage that possibility -- and they inevitably carry the day.

In the end, the Palestinians and the Israeli government are going to have to face "get over it" moments that will be extremely difficult for both of them. The Palestinians are going to have to give up their "right of return" demand, and the Israelis are going to have to dismantle the settlements on the West Bank, which will be an enormously difficult political goal to achieve. But if the Israelis and Palestinians can't get over it, then there is no chance of peace.

Ironically, Israel is in a much better security position than in the past. Think about it: it is inflicting horrid casualties in Gaza and not one Arab state is going to war with it, not one! Until the Jimmy Carter-brokered peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, Israel faced endless wars and threats of wars with neighboring Arab states. Not anymore. That's an incredible accomplishment, and it came through steps toward peace, not war. (There has even been "chatter" over the past two years that Israel is close to a peace agreement with Syria.)

Now the Persian Islamic Iran is the greatest fear of Israel, but the best security for Israel is peace and partnership with the Palestinians, not creating new recruits for the Islamic fundamentalists by laying siege to Gaza and killing hundreds of civilians. That's the Netanyahu formula for keeping Israel in a permanent state of war. Netanyahu is Israel's Cheney. It is also what Hamas and Hezbollah want. They know how to bait the bear.

A couple of years ago, I attended a graduation at Brandeis University, a college that was set up at a time when Jews were under a quota at the Ivy League schools. I met a young Israeli Palestinian graduate who was vivacious, brilliant and crying because of all of her mixed emotions (yes, there are Arab students at Brandeis). Her parents were there from Israel, and, ironically, someone was translating in Hebrew (they didn't speak English) what was happening. And I thought, this is a young Palestinian woman, who if she had been in Gaza or in the West Bank might have been killed in one of the many clashes between Israel and the Palestinians. But through her intelligence and fortitude, she had ended up with a full scholarship at a prestigious university in America that happened to be established as an academic refuge for Jewish students and scholars at a time when Anti-Semitism was socially acceptable in the United States.

And I recalled many years ago meeting a young Israeli woman on a Kibbutz whose face was disfigured. Her Kibbutz was on the Lebanese border and she had been riding a horse that stepped on a landmine placed there by terrorists. She was also vibrant and full of life.

And I think of what is happening now in Gaza and I grieve, because both Israelis and Palestinians are being denied a future of peace by extremists on both sides. Young people are being killed, whether it has been in the horror of suicide bombings that ravaged Israel for years, rocket attacks, or the bombings from the air by the IDF in Gaza.

Is there hope? It is certainly difficult to see past the horror of Gaza at this time. There is a cliched Israeli grim joke about a frog and a scorpion who meet at the edge of a river. The scorpion asks the frog if it can ride on top of the frog to the other side of the water. The frog responds, "Only if you promise not to sting me." The scorpion agrees and crawls on the back of the frog. Mid-river, the Scorpion delivers a lethal sting to the frog. The frog, gasping for breath, asks: "Why did you sting me? You'll die too because you'll drown as I sink to the bottom." The scorpion responds: "Because this is the Middle East."

Were it not so, may it not be so in the future!

May the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton have the courage to bang some heads on both sides and provide a future of opportunity and a future without the threat of more blood and death to the young Israelis and Palestinians.

They deserve to live in peace. Yitzhak Rabin came to understand that -- and he was killed for daring to dream of an end to war between Israel and the Palestinians.

http://buzzflash.com/articles/node/7361

I agree that most Israelis and Palestinians could live together, though I don't think there'd be lots of affection involved. I don't expect an Obama miracle, but democrats have tended to look at the Israel/Palestine problem more moderately. It seems republicans think the only solution is killing more Muslims and then putting some puppet in power who turns sour after a few years.

One thing I've noticed is that every time the US backs a moderate Muslim it makes things worse in the long run. Let Hamas keep their feel of power, but find a way to make it embarassing to their own for both Hamas and the radical Israelis to act. Some incentive needs to be given to both Palestine and Israel to keep their bad dogs on a short chain.

Maybe instead of playing world cop the US and her allies need to work up something that would be highly beneficial to both sides if they would seriously try to stop the radicals. We're already pumping billions upon billions into a war effort and have sold arms all over the Middle East for decades. Might be time To teach them about high dollar business instead of war.

We could build soccer stadiums for them.

Justoo wrote:

We could build soccer stadiums for them.

How about all of Europe get together and build them one gigantic wind farm? Money to landowners, power for Europe, and construction and maintenance jobs for alot of locals. Nobody around Yocemento would be upset either.

And we could build mega Casinos in Palestine offering free drinks and a discount kosher deli that would be irresistable to those transplanted New Yorkers who live in their "homeland" of Israel.

The Palestine Palomino Palace?
The Sands in the sand?

Justoo wrote:

The Palestine Palomino Palace?
The Sands in the sand?

but with lagal gaming goes prositution and the jewish girls don;t put out before marriage

Could Palestine's Mirage also have a mock-up of an Israeli (French) Mirage jet?

slickjay12 wrote:

Justoo wrote:

The Palestine Palomino Palace?
The Sands in the sand?

but with lagal gaming goes prositution and the jewish girls don;t put out before marriage

So? They take off their wedding bands.

Not bad ideas for casinos. And we could import the prostitutes. But not from Wichita. We don't want ill casino goers.

Here's another idea. How about painting a picture of Allah on every Jewish building and car and put menorahs and the Star of David in the windows of every building in Palestine. How could they shoot at each other then?

Drop a nuke on Jereuselem and drop another on Mecca. Neither one has any oil we cannot do without.

Great idea mike. Start a nuclear conflict for peace. You do realize nukes only worked with Japan because nobody else had one to shoot back with in 1945 don't ya? You hit Jeruselem and Israel hits muslims all around, then Pakistan hits Israel, India hits Pakistan, and Russia and China just start hitting everyone.

Israel would be gone, retalliating agin nobody. Pakistan and India argue about Kashmere, not Israel.

http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-hamas-aint-no-hezbollah/


The War Nerd: Hamas Ain’t No Hezbollah
By Gary Brecher

What’s going on in Gaza now is pretty easy to understand if you think a little bit about the way military trends have been going in the past century-but you also have to be willing to take a cold look at how wars work these days, when there’s no such thing as those “purely military” wars you WW II freaks dream about. (There never really was, but that’s another story.)

The Israelis attacked now because of two non-military cycles: the news cycle and the presidential cycle. This was like a war by an astrologer: the stars had to be in exactly the right position before the Apaches could start blasting and the Merkavas could roll.

The most important cycle of all is the news cycle. This war happened during international media dead week, between Christmas and New Year. Ordinary people are drunk or hungover or snowed in, and the people who matter, the media players, are off in Cancun and Phuket, soaking up rum and sun with their blackberries turned off. They’re not going to bum out their call girls watching the news from Gaza.

And the Israelis wanted a time when everybody was distracted for a simple reason: asymmetrical war isn’t pretty. That’s the same reason they won’t let camera crews into Gaza. To do this kind of war, you have to kill a lot of civilians, because the whole civilian/military distinction doesn’t really apply. If your neighbor is a mid-ranking officer in the military wing of Hamas, the best way to kill him is while he sleeps, before he can arm himself, deploy his men and maybe inflict casualties. Thanks to years of excellent intelligence on Gaza, the Israelis know exactly who’s where at pretty much any minute of any day. And they have attack helicopters hovering over it non-stop, ready to send a Hellfire missile down to take out anybody who might help organize a counterattack.

But Gaza is the most crowded slum in the world, so when you send that missile into his tenement apartment at 4 am, it’s going to kill him, but it’s also going to kill his wife, their kids (and Gaza has a huge birthrate) and half the block. That makes cold military sense but it doesn’t look good on the news.

Of course you could send troops in, the idea being they’re cleaner than missiles, but sending troops into a highrise slum full of people who hate your guts is not such a good idea if you’re worried about casualties. And like I’ve said before, the IDF has one big weakness: they don’t like to take casualties.

So naturally they did what they could to decapitate Hamas from the air first, then with artillery. Besides, the idea that raids by infantry are less bloody than air strikes is pretty dicey anyway. Troops get nervous, they start shooting, pretty soon the collateral damage bill is just as big as it would be with an air strike, only this way the raiding party suffers casualties too.

So it made perfect sense for the Israelis to step up their longterm policy of zapping Hamas cadres from the air, and to do it right now, while nobody’s watching TV.

The other cycle is more of a gamble: the presidential cycle. I can’t believe nobody’s saying the obvious here: the Israelis want to do this now, once and for all, while Bush is still in office. They know that Bush will let them do whatever they want. Bush and Cheney are literally more extreme than about half of the Israeli electorate. They’ve never objected to anything Israel wants to do except when the Israelis wanted to talk to the Syrians. As long as it involves blowing stuff up, Bush is guaranteed to be on their side.

So the planets aligned perfectly for Israel, not so much Age of Aquarius way as Zero Hour, last chance to blow up Gaza before Obama comes in.

Will Obama be more hardnosed with the Israelis? I doubt it. Why would he? You’re not supposed to say out loud that there’s a big rich Israeli lobby, but everybody knows there is. And more to the point, what’s their counterweight? Who cares about the Palestinians, even in the Arab world, never mind DC? So there’s a big net gain to any US politician who backs Israel and no reason at all to back their opponents.

So I don’t see why the Israelis are so worried about Obama. Still, a military planner’s job is to be paranoid and the Israeli staff has decided that since Bush is a sure thing and the new guy is an unknown quantity, why not do it now?

I’ll tell you something else: Obama’s people are cheering the IDF too, for the timing at least. “Dear IDF, Thank you for doing this while Bush is still around to take the heat! Signed, Barack.” That’s exactly what Obama meant when somebody asked him about Gaza and he said, “Hey, we only have one president at a time!”
That tells you something else about this operation: it’s likely to end before January 20, 2009. Obama doesn’t want his big inauguration party bummed out with pictures of dead Arab kids, so the IDF has this thing planned to end sometime in early January.

Of course planning is one thing, execution is another. The IDF planned for a quick clean fight against Hezbollah in 2006, but that’s not the way it worked out.

This time the IDF will succeed, at least in the short term, and the campaign will go according to plan. That’s my guess anyway. What we have here is Hamas getting a very hard lesson in why it’s dangerous to pretend you’re Hezbollah when you’re not.

Hezbollah fought so well last time around that everybody started getting uppity, and the Israelis didn’t like it at all. They weren’t getting respect. They couldn’t destroy Hezbollah, though; the Hezzies are too smart, too big, too well integrated with the locals in Lebanon. Hezbollah has all kinds of advantages that Hamas doesn’t have, like great strategic depth, pockets of Shia support all through Lebanon, far from the IDF’s reach (unless they tried another fullscale invasion of Lebanon, a real bad idea).

So for more than two years now Israel has had to put up with Hezbollah sitting just over its northern border with a smug little grin on its hairy face, strutting on the rep it made back in 2006-and there’s not much the IDF can do about it.

But the worst thing you can do is hide behind your big brother, because what if somebody chooses you out alone? That’s what’s happened to Hamas. They’re trying to be Hezbollah South, woofing at the Israelis, shooting off those stupid backyard cherrybomb rockets that couldn’t hit the ground if gravity didn’t help out…and meanwhile the IDF is in a very bad mood, embarrassed about losing to Hezbollah, bummed about Bush leaving office, and getting poked in the ass nonstop by hardcore settler types wanting them to blow something up right now, dammit!

It’s what they call a no-brainer. You may not be able to take out Hezbollah but just look at Gaza: a tiny strip of land, about six miles wide in most places. No strategic depth for Hamas at all. And Egypt hates Hamas like poison, so they’re quietly telling Mossad: “Go for it!”

Then there’s the issue of combat potential, as in Hamas ain’t no Hezbollah. Hamas is tougher than the PLO; they proved that in the skirmishes over the last few years about who runs the PA. But that’s not saying much; one of my grandmothers-not both, just one, I’m trying to be fair here-was tougher than the PLO too. And there’s a huge, huge difference between scaring off fat sleazy Arafat gangsters by firing in the air and actually fighting the IDF. Hezbollah has somebody doing serious strategic planning; Hamas has a bunch of hotheads. Hezbollah has been bunkering up, training in anti-armor operations, learning to deal with air strikes for years. Hamas believes in yelling at the attack helicopters.

They’re going down. Now, that’s not to say they’ll be wiped out, exterminated, whatever. That doesn’t happen any more, for reasons I’ll discuss in my next column. What we’re talking about here, what the IDF has in mind, is more what the Romans called “decimation”: killing enough of the right people to make Hamas weak for five or ten years, which may, just may, be long enough to give Israel’s allies the PLO/Fatah the edge in the Palestinian Civil War. That’s what this is about, getting your guys to win that war.

Will it work? Depends on the time frame. For a few years, yes; in the long run, Hell no. But if you’re the IDF, there are no good options in the long term. Demographics, dude; no way out of that spiral. The short term is all you’ve got, and in the short term Hamas is going to find out why it’s not a good idea to pretend you’re Hezbollah when you can’t back it up.

Gary Brecher is the author of the War Nerd. Send your comments to brecher@exiledonline.com.

mikecc wrote:

Israel would be gone, retalliating agin nobody. Pakistan and India argue about Kashmere, not Israel.

Be a big nuke if it takes out all of the Israeli missiles. They can't be dumb enough to have all their nukes in Jeruselem. Don't matter anyways. Our predominately Christian government will never risk getting a spanking from the sky man for hurting his chosen malcontents.

Those murderous thugs are favored by no God. They only want you to believe that.

Are you speaking of the Muslims or the Jews?

They both claim they are favored and both are murderous thugs.

I would guess that since the Jews are in the wrong here, I would be refering to them.

On Wednesday, Martino, president of the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace, delivered the Vatican's toughest criticism of Israel since its offensive in the Palestinian-ruled enclave, calling Gaza a "big concentration camp."

http://uk.reuters.com/article/burningIssues/idUKTRE50730R20090108

Since you are guessing who you are referring to, I am guessing you have given fair consideration to both sides of this situation.

1. "There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies ­not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy." Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001
2. "The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more".... Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000

3. " [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs." Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts". New Statesman, 25 June 1982.

4. "The Palestinians" would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls." " Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988

5. "When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.

6. "How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.

7. "There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed." Golda Maier Israeli Prime Minister June 15, 1969

8. "The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war." Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972.

9. David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): "If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121.

10. Ben Gurion also warned in 1948 : "We must do everything to insure they ( the Palestinians) never do return." Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes. "The old will die and the young will forget."

11. "We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves." Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.

12. "Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." - Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio. (Certainly the FBI's cover-up of the Israeli spy ring/phone tap scandal suggests that Mr. Sharon may not have been joking.)

13. "We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours." Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces - Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13 April 1983, New York Times 14 April 1983.

14. "We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return" David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.

15. " ... we should prepare to go over to the offensive with the aim of smashing Lebanon, Trans-jordan and Syria... The weak point in the Arab coalition is Lebanon [for] the Moslem regime is artificial and easy to undermine. A Christian state should be established... When we smash the [Arab] Legions strength and bomb Amman, we will eliminate Transjordan, too, and then Syria will fall. If Egypt still dares to fight on, we shall bomb Port Said, Alexandria, and Cairo." " David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.

16. "We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum"

17. "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 1969.

18. "We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'" Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.

19. Rabin's description of the conquest of Lydda, after the completion of Plan Dalet. "We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters" Uri Lubrani, PM Ben-Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs, 1960. From "The Arabs in Israel" by Sabri Jiryas.

20. "There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. [I] tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument:...the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish...with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary." Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department. From Israel: an Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5.

21. "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

22. "It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism,colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aahronot, of 14 July 1972.

23. "Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine,Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry.

24. "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." -- Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, Feb. 27, 1994 [Source: N.Y. Times, Feb. 28, 1994, p. 1]

25. "We Jews, we are the destroyers and will remain the destroyers. Nothing you can do will meet our demands and needs. We will forever destroy because we want a world of our own." (You Gentiles, by Jewish Author Maurice Samuels, p. 155).

26. "We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or consent." (Jewish Banker Paul Warburg, February 17, 1950, as he testified before the U.S. Senate).

27. "We will establish ourselves in Palestine whether you like it or not...You can hasten our arrival or you can equally retard it. It is however better for you to help us so as to avoid our constructive powers being turned into a destructive power which will overthrow the world." (Chaim Weizmann, Published in "Judische Rundschau," No. 4, 1920)

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/palestinians.html?q=palestinians.html

sounds naziesque

Wow....talk about regurgitating old news......Quotes from the 1920s!

mikecc wrote:

Wow....talk about regurgitating old news......Quotes from the 1920s!

Yahweh loves you!!

יַהְוֶה

* Not nuke Jereuselem...Do nuke Tel Aviv.......and Gush Dan.

Rog wrote:

12. "Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." - Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio. (Certainly the FBI's cover-up of the Israeli spy ring/phone tap scandal suggests that Mr. Sharon may not have been joking.)

I havn't researched all the quotes you gave, but if even just this one is accurate we should end all ties with Israel permanently.

A very interesting collection of quotes, most of which are alot more recent than 1920. Have you checked them all for authenticity?

There is an Israel that exists beyond the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, an Israel that the headlines and television news stories of the past two years seldom show us. That's why ISRAEL21c was created, to show the world the Israel that exists despite the conflict; the Israel of high tech development and advanced medical research; the Israel that is a force for decency and democracy in the world. And that's why you should support ISRAEL21c, so we can continue educating people about this Israel, the Israel that adds value to American life - and life around the world - every day; an Israel that shares the very same values that drive life and democracy in the United States and all other freedom-loving countries. Your donation will help us broaden our web-based program, continue our unprecedented campaign of national television commercials in the United States and support our efforts to generate more positive stories about Israeli achievements and contributions in the mainstream American media.

http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=Zone&enZone=OurMission&enInfolet=donate.jsp

Israel is my favorite charity!! Yay!! Murderers!!

Hamas takes donations also, if you wish to support a different band of murderers.

Hamas is not tax deductible in America. Israel is.

Looks to me like Israel and Palestine have a similar problem as the US. They elect corrupt power hungry assholes to run things.

Here's a photo that's more interesting.

A very interesting read here.

http://www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/Zionism/opposition.cfm

A couple quotes from the site. Not from the Arabs, not from white supremecists. From Orthodox Jews....

Quote :

It is openly stated in books written by the founders of Zionism that the means by which they planned to establish a state was by instigating anti-Semitism, and undermining the security of the Jews in all the lands of the world, until they would be forced to flee to their state. And thus they did - They intentionally infuriated the German people and fanned the flames of Nazi hatred, and they helped the Nazis, with trickery and deceit, to take whole Jewish communities off to the concentration camps, and the Zionists themselves admit this. (See the books Perfidy, Min Hameitzor, etc.). The Zionists continue to practice this strategy today. They incite anti-Semitism and then they present themselves as the "saviors". Here are two replies given by Leaders of the Zionists during World War II, when they were asked for money to help ransom Jews from the Nazis. Greenbaum said "One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Poland." Weitzman said, "The most important part of the Jewish people is already in the land (of Israel) and those who are left, are unimportant"

Quote :

The Zionists have enough control over the American news media to make sure that only their side of the story is heard.

They make it look like all Jewry and their rabbis are Zionists, but this is false propaganda.

The most important Rabbis and the majority of religious Jewry are opposed to Zionism, but their voice is not heard because of Zionist control of American news media.

The Zionists terrorize everyone who speaks out against them.

"The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group."

You should quit being silly.