More Horror Coming Out of Gaza
The Washington Post has a long and heartrending story about the fate of an extended Palestinian family in Gaza during the ferocious onslaught of the Israeli military. The family of about 40 huddled together in one small house after the Israelis sequentially destroyed the houses where the others lived, killing anybody not fast enough to escape (and shooting an unarmed civilian running out the back door). Over two weeks, 29 members of the family died, 16 when the Israelis aimed their shells at the house. They were the lucky ones. Others died slow and agonizing deaths as the Israelis refused to allow humanitarian aid into the area. Some family members went out to plead with the Israeli military. One was told to “go back to your death” and another was detained for a full day for having the audacity to complain to an Israeli soldier about those dying in the house. The Red Cross accused the Israelis of deliberately preventing humanitarian aid from accessing the area. This was a war crime. And it is only one example.
We must see the face of Christ in every Palestinian who died in Gaza, especially the innocent children. And yet, many American Christians defend the right to Israel to do as it pleases. Some will blame the victims, saying the Palestinians brought it on themselves by supporting Hamas. Some will say that Israel’s actions were justified because Hamas was operating in the are. They will make consequentialist arguments to the effect that these deaths are a “necessary price” to protect Israel. And they will happily support the formal cooperation in evil by the US government’s princely sums of military aid granted to Israel– their own tax dollars.
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Also from the Washington Post company is this estimation of 500 or so tunnels between Gaza and Egypt used to move weapons and “martyrs.”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/humannature/archive/2009/01/16/closing-the-gaza-tunnels.aspx
“We must see the face of Christ in every Palestinian who died in Gaza, especially the innocent children.”
Amen.
As we must see the face of Christ in everyone, especially innocent sufferers…
The Gaza war looks like a turning point to me. The State of Israel has gone around the bend. The government apparently takes the view that nothing they do can be wrong because they are the good guys. How else can it seem to make sense to kill and maim hundreds of Gazans, men, women and children, in a few days, in response to a danger to dozens of Israelis over a period of years?
This is a matter of how Israel is fundamentally perceived by the greater part of the rest of the world, and may also be a matter of how Israel perceives itself. I expect some real soul-searching to come on the part of the Israeli public, and perhaps this will go together with Obama’s efforts in the area to lead to some progress in the next couple of years.
“Some will blame the victims…”
Well, maybe. And some of us will even point out that a thing ain’t necessarily so just because a bunch of Hamas supporters in Gaza claimed it to be so in a Washington Post interview. It’s hard to view people as victims when they themselves actively support the genocide of other people. The Gazan Muslims, as everyone knows, stupidly intend to continue trying to annihilate Israel and the Jews. It’s in their charter. That’s what they have solemnly sworn to do and they just don’t seem to want to stop.
So the Jews every now and then have to b*tch-slap the Gazans when the Gazans get a little too murderous.
In fact you are the one blaming the victims, Mr. Minion. That would be the Jews.
Hamas has set up an independent hospital in the Gaza Strip to treat its operatives wounded in fighting with the IDF – and, according to Israeli estimates, it is pilfering a significant portion of the medicine allowed into the Strip January 6, 2009.
A number of armed men have seized on Tuesday a Jordanian aid convoy after entering the Gaza Strip via Karem Abu Salem Crossing Point, Petra was informed.
Israel has opened a regional medical centre specifically for the injured citizens of Gaza. This is an initiative of the Humanitarian Affairs Coordination Centre which Issac Herzog heads up in conjunction with Magen David Adom.
Below are statistics for aid sent since the beginning of the conflict:
* 36,991 tons of humanitarian supplies have been transferred to Gaza in 1,498 trucks. Also, 1,726,351 liters of fuel have been conveyed through Nahal Oz and Kerem Shalom.
* 449 dual nationals were evacuated from Gaza.
* 3000 units of blood were donated by Jordan.
* 5 ambulances donated by Turkey.
* 5 ambulances transferred from the West Bank on behalf of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.
* 38 people evacuated to Israel for medical needs, including two injured children.
* Numerous infrastructural repairs have taken place – sewage, water and electricity.
What share does Hamas keep when they specifically utilize innocent people’s homes to launch attacks to deliberately garner “sympathy” for anyone wounded in the process.
Where are the prayers for the people wounded and killed by Hamas rockets?
Tim – Why so threatened?
I don’t understand the point of Christopher’s effort to defend Israel at all costs. Is he denying the grave injustice of the Israel actions? It is left unsaid. As for the statistics, the humanitarian aid was allowed in only after military operations had ceased, and after families had been left to die. I would also like to see the following statistics:
* Number of dead Palestinians, including children.
* Number of wounded.
* Number of homes destoyed.
* Number of other infrastructure destoyed.
* Total economic cost of the attack.
And then there is Agim Zabeli whose repulsive comment I almost deleted, but decided to keep as an example of eveything that is wrong with the American fetish for Israeli violence: “So the Jews every now and then have to b*tch-slap the Gazans when the Gazans get a little too murderous.” God help us. In that sentence alone, I see so many theological errors: vengeance over justice, consequentialism, collective punishment, glorification of violence, and the conflation of the Jewish religion with the secular state of Israel. I suggest Mr. Zabeli ponder Jesus the Christ, a Jew whose teachings go completely against the thoughts expressed above.
Not at all costs, MM.
However, when you make statements like “others died slow and agonizing deaths as the Israelis refused to allow humanitarian aid into the area,” you might want to allow for challenges to your claims.
Likewise help to the Gazans might very well be impeded by Hamas’ ongoing efforts to hijack ambulances, as the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Israel is culpable to an extent; but your omission of any blame to Hamas is glaring.
Christopher Blosser, the “blame game” on EVERYBODY’S part is what is continuing this genocidal struggle into the infinite future. Palestine is a blood-soaked, evil land full of dark, sinister memories for all peoples who ever became stuck in it. The intelligent, enlightened part of the Palestinian population–their extremely well-educated, cultivated diaspora, who might have made a difference regarding the fashioning of a compromise–have long ago fled, and the enlightened Jews, who don’t believe in so ridiculous a concept as a “Holy Land,” never went there in the first place.
And the Americans and the Europeans would have no connections with the place, if it weren’t for oil, AIPAC (whose influence in American politics I predict Obama will be able to lessen) and residual–but now quite unnecessary–guilt for the Holocaust.
I really wish that America and Western Europe would just withdraw from involvements in most of the Middle East and let those terrible people stew in their own juices. And it may soon be possible, with the restructuring of energy productions, world-wide.
I agree with both Christopher and Minion. The plethora of reports suggest Israel was not as dutiful as it ought to have been providing aid and obeying the Geneva Conventions. However, Hamas has its share of blame too, as it is likely that they deliberately hampered Israeli efforts in order to give Israel a public relations black eye.
Chris is right; to omit blame for Hamas is a glaring omission. This conflict cannot do with any more one-sided blame games, on either side. Both sides must be held accountable if there is any hope for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
his conflict cannot do with any more one-sided blame games, on either side. Both sides must be held accountable if there is any hope for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
In addition. consider the factor of Hamas’ own executions of the Gazan people suspected (real or imagined) of “collaborating” with Israel.
Tim – Why so threatened?
I asked a simple question Dr. Phil…
And the Americans and the Europeans would have no connections with the place, if it weren’t for oil, AIPAC (whose influence in American politics I predict Obama will be able to lessen) and residual–but now quite unnecessary–guilt for the Holocaust.
I really wish that America and Western Europe would just withdraw from involvements in most of the Middle East and let those terrible people stew in their own juices. And it may soon be possible, with the restructuring of energy productions, world-wide.
I can’t believe it! It’s impossible! I agree with DigbyDolben (with exception to the Obama part)
Chris is right; to omit blame for Hamas is a glaring omission. This conflict cannot do with any more one-sided blame games, on either side. Both sides must be held accountable if there is any hope for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
Yes.
David Raber
Be aware that the NY Times this week reported that the response by Israel to Gaza this time has great support among Israelis which is not usual…. with Netanyahu being a chief benficiary in polling even though he was not an active controlling force in this campaign. The number of those killed in Israel….while critical on Christian blogs by those safe in the US or Europe…..is not the critical thing for Israelis for whom the russian roulette nature of Hamas’ bad technology could kill their loved ones any day of the past ten years (11,000 rocket attempts according to Israeli figures)….. meaning they have to live with russian roulette tension at all times as to whether e.g. their five year old will live to be 6.
Mr. Minion:
I’m not really sure what is so repulsive in my comment but I suppose tastes vary. I also don’t think I’m the one conflating Israel and Jews. There is no reason to suppose – certainly no evidence to support the contention – that Muslim on Muslim violence would get very much notice at this board. For violence against Muslims to get anything other than pro-forma disapproval around here the perpetrators of the violence have to be identifiable as pro-Western, or they have to be Christians or Jews. We (meaning this board of course) may pay lip-service to the moral agency of the Muslim side, but the only real condemnation is directed at the Jewish, Christian, or Western side.
Hamas will continue to attack Israel (and Jews in general) no matter what Jews or the Israeli government do. Gazan Muslims will actively help them, rich Arabs will continue to subsidize and support them, Western leftists will continue to justify them, and Israel will continue to be condemned every single time it responds, no matter what. I see no great injustice in referring to that response in a flippant manner when everybody else is acting as predictably as if they were in a scene in ‘Groundhog Day’.
But meanwhile, Mr. Zabelli, the “ticking time bomb” of the Arab demographic inside Israel itself is spelling the eventual end of Israel as a Zionist State. The “Eretz Israel” politicians are creating the mentality among the Arabs for a second Holocaust of the Jewish people, once the Muslim Arab population within Palestine outnumbers the Jews. What we desperately need, to avoid that, is a commitment, among Palestinians and Israeli Jews, to build a single, secularist and pluralist state that has no aspirations to being a Muslim or a a Jewish theocracy. In other words, we need a renunciation, by the Israeli Jews, of the failed “Zionist Project.” Otherwise, when America turns her back on the Middle East–as she assuredly will, once carbon fuel is no longer crucial to her energy needs–the Jews will reap the whirlwind they are presently building.
Christopher: you keep bringing everything back to various evils perpetrated by Hamas. That does not matter– an intrinsically evil act by definition does not depend on circumstances.
Well, Mr. dolben, we may see things differently enough that discussion becomes very difficult. But I’ll try if you will.
You write of “creating the mentality among the Arabs for a second Holocaust”. I don’t understand that. The mentality was there during the first Holocaust, it permeated the Arab attempts to distroy Israel at birth, and it has never ended. The only major exceptions I’m aware of are Egypt and Jordan. Significantly, those exceptions were brought about by force of Israeli arms.
The fact is every year Israel has been becoming more secular and the Muslim Arabs more nominally theocratic (by which I mean, of course, justifying their pre-existing genocidal drive in more and more religious terms). The issue in the middle-east is not – and for all I know has never been – the decisions and actions of the Israeli government. The issue has always been the bigotry, ambition, and avarice of the Arab Muslim elite, coupled with, well, the bigotry, ambition, avarice and envy of significant portions of the general Arab Muslim population.
They hate Jews. They always did, and they will continue to as long as the only voices they hear come from their own echo chamber of rationalization and blame against others. And when the oil money stops flowing I’m only aware of one country in the middle-east that has the social, political, and economic basis to continue to be as powerful as it is today.
“We” don’t “desperately need” anything. The Arabs around Israel, though, would be well-advised to drop some of their Jew-hatred and come to reasonable terms with the Israelis. Pound for pound, the Israeli military capability is far greater than its neighbors and no sane Arab would want to live in the area after the sort of war that would be required to destroy what they disgustingly refer to as the “entity”.
Mr. Zabeli, you’re missing the point ENTIRELY: it won’t have to be destroyed by war: it will be destroyed by inanition, by intermarriage, by ossification of Hebrew language skills, by loss of faith in the project itself, as the Muslim population expands exponentially, and the American Jewish population loses interest in response to the increasing unpopularity, in America, for support of an overall negative to the country’s national interest.
And, by the way, you are absolutely wrong that Muslims “always” hated Jews; in fact, during the Christian Middle Ages and the Early Modern period in Europe, the chief Muslim power, the Sublime Porte, was the protector of European Jews and the guarantor of their refuge from the Christians’ pogroms.
MM,
I agree that those involved in the posted story appear to be guilty of war crimes, and a full investigation is warranted.
But I honestly would be more sympathetic to your posts if I saw so much of an ounce of recognition in Hamas’ complicity with harm to civilians.
For example there have been reports of Hamas’ hijacking of ambulances and diverting international aid intended for the civilians of Gaza to themselves. Israel recently coordinated the successful establishment of Jordanian field hospital — 33 trucks with apporx 210 medical staff and equipment — at Erez crossing.
Obviously, such factors which might mitigate the assignment of blame squarely upon Israel, which is implied in your post.
Mr. dolben:
“inanition”? Cool word, thanks. But I don’t think I was missing your point, and certainly not ENTIRELY. While your “ticking time bomb” referred to demographic trends, your use of “reap the whirlwind” and “second holocaust” seemed pretty clearly to refer to rather more traditional methods of dissovling Jewry.
There is nothing the Jews in Israel can concede to Arab Muslims that will prevent those Muslims from destroying the Jews as soon as they can and it has been that way since before the birth of modern Israel. Your salute to the Turk notwithstanding, Christians may have been more anti-Semetic than Muslims during the rule of Alfred the Great (and much more recently than that) but modern Arab Jew-hatred certainly predates the birth of the Zionist Entity. I’ll happily agree to withdraw my use of the word “always” and replace it with “since before the birth of the oldest currently living human being”.
Look, Mr. Zabeli, I don’t want “Jewry” “dissolved” at all: I am, myself, one fourth Jewish and I have hardly ever met a Jew in my life whom I didn’t like very much; they/we are, for the most part, brilliantly cultured and refined people. Not only that, but many of the most significant advances in Western science, philosophy and the arts are the work of the Jews.
Also, I tend, in theological matters, to differ entirely from most of the right-wing Catholics writing on these threads. To wit: I believe that the Jews REMAIN, in an important sense, the “chosen” of Yahweh, that their “covenant” antedates the one formed by Yeshuah the Christ, and that it is STILL “in effect”–that is to say that there is no need for any “conversion” by Jews to Christianity for their religion to be fully “salvific.”
My problem is with Zionism, and with how it has misappropriated the mystique and legacy of the Holocaust, and used it to form an almost exact similacrum of racist European colonialism in the Middle East, in a dark, sinister, blood-soaked parcel of land that seems to me to be historically accursed. My view of all this is almost precisely that of George Steiner, a famous Jewish literary critic who has been called “anti-Semitic” because of his opposition to the Zionist project.
If Jews and Arabs want to continue to kill each other over this God-forsaken (literally) space of earth, then let them, but I want my own country and the European countries (the TRUE “homelands” of the Jewish people) to wash their hands of involvement with this struggle. I want the continual funding of Egyptian, Israeli and Saudi war-machines to stop entirely, and I want the country of my citizenship (the U.S.) to make only one last stab, under Obama, at fashioning a truce and a lasting peace. If it’s impossible, the only thing I want the U.S. to do for the Jews is to promise to evacuate them back to where they belong, if the Palestinians begin a “second Holocaust” of the Jewish people.
I most certainly don’t want my country or any other country of Western Christendom to continue to be involved, in terms of any material support for it, with such a genocidal and disproportionate blood-letting as what we’ve just witnessed in the Gaza. The response of a still-civilised people to such a threat as that offered to Isaeli civilians by Hamas’ bottle rockets and cherry bombs in rocket launchers would have been similar to that of the stiff-lipped British people in the blitz or under the threat of the IRA: namely determination to keep their phlegm, maintain their aplomb and doggedly go about their own business, thus defeating the intentions of the “terrorists”; instead, the Israeli people have succombed to the wiles and manipulations of corrupt demagogic politicians like Olmert, and have killed civilians to no practical purpose–barbarically, unnecessarily. They are not fit allies for the slightly more civilised peoples of the Western democracies, and so should be abandoned to their own fates–unless and until the Palestinians start massacring them, as I said before.
Mr. dolben:
While I understand the danger one faces publicly disagreeing with a “brilliantly cultured and refined” person, I figure, what the heck, the sun is over the yardarm, I’ve popped a beer, the wife is running off to some sort of meeting, I don’t have anything better to do, and you’ve made a couple points that require response.
Hamas is not firing bottle rockets and cherry bombs. It is firing anti-personnel missles and mortars. Specifically at civilians. And the results aren’t all they hope for in part because Israel has gotten so quick at responding to the launching sites that Hamas can’t always get their legs under them to do the job right. The acts committed by Hamas are as good an example of “intrinsically evil” as any rational person could require.
And the British did not simply keep stiff upper lips and go about their usual business when the V-1s rained down or the Irish bombed London, unless by “usual business” we include making war with all their might against the Hitlerites, and sending quiet, hard, dangerous men from the SAS to Belfast to, uhm, do various things.
Part of our disagreement is in our understanding of the facts. I don’t particularly believe the atrocity stories that come out of Gaza, the West Bank, or The Lebanon. You apparently do. My personal feeling is the Israelis rank with the Americans as not only the most lethal military forces in the history of man, but also the most morally fastidious. Therefore I want verification before I buy into hysterical allegations of war crimes.
Also the land in question – and I agree it seems to have been built on an Indian burial ground for all the trouble that befalls its inhabitants – has, as far as I can tell, been “colonized” by various forces since Joshua’s time. Western colonialism is apparently distastful to you but I didn’t notice you mention any problem with Turkish conquest, nor did you choose to comment one way or another on the Caliphate, Rome, or any other group that might have blundered about the area, leaving what some people consider historical mistakes.
Thanks for the conversation. I’ve enjoyed it.
Yeah, obviously there’s no point in arguing with you: you know perfectly well that the Brits didn’t bomb Ireland when the IRA attacked them; you know perfectly well that Churchill refused to abrogate the civil rights of British citizens in order to fight Nazi “terrorism” (as opposed to the “crackdowns” within Israel on Palestinians at “checkpoints” and other barriers).
You’re one of those people who stoke the fires of hatred and recrimination, preaching that justice and virtue are all on one side and that the opponents of that side are perfect villains.
I just want my country and her allies to refuse to have anything to do with Israelis or Palestinians. You may all stew together in your own juices, as far as I’m concerned, and we’ll come to rescue you Jews after your foolish, blind intransigence has yielded the kind of persecution by the majority that the Tamils of Sri Lanka are presently suffering, as a result of electoral defeats. And the only reason we should do that is spare Americans and Europeans the grief of seeing their relatives made homeless and slaughtered.
Mr. dolben:
Not sure what I wrote to irritate you enough to write: “You’re one of those people who stoke the fires of hatred, etc.” I’m the one pointing out that accusing people of war crimes based on an unverified newspaper story might itself be a little on the stoky side.
The accusations I made on the other hand were pretty reasonable (Hamas publicly pursues the destruction of Israel -matter of public record; purposely firing on civilians with mortars and rockets is intrinsically evil – common sense).
I understand we still seem to be talking around each other but I thought we were trying to work our way through it. Maybe another time.
Mr. Agim Zabeli, it is all about proportionality. I have the right to defend myself, but not, say, to gouge out the eyes of an assailant for coming at me with his fists. (I guess it would be OK to bitch-slap him, though.) As another example, perhaps “the international community” had some right to take action against the Saddam Hussein regime regarding its supposed WMDs. Then George Bush decided to flat out invade and take over the whole country! That was one disproportionate bitch-slap–even beyond the extravagant bitch-slappiness of the Israelis going at the Gazans.
On another matter, yes, I was apparently dead wrong about Israel public opinion recoiling in horror at the Gazan mess. I can only hope I am right in the long run; meanwhile, perhaps I merit a well-deserved bitch-slap.
Mr. Raber:
You really seem focused on that whole bitch-slap thing. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I guess.
I believe that destroying Hamas’ capability to fire rockets and mortars into Israel is a reasonably proportinate response to, well, Hamas firing rockets and mortars into Israel.
We could talk about Iraq in another thread if you want.
Mr. Zabeli, you said:
I believe that destroying Hamas’ capability to fire rockets and mortars into Israel is a reasonably proportinate response to, well, Hamas firing rockets and mortars into Israel.
You are talking about a goal; when I say the Israel action in Gaza has been disproportionate, I’m talking about the means–that is the whole point.
Usually throwing a whole lot of firepower at a problem is done because it is easy and relatively safe for one’s own forces. As Harry Potter said in one of them movies (and I paraphrase), The time comes when one is called on to do what is easy, or what is right.
What might be more right than a whole lot of firepower that is bound to kill a disproportionate number of civilians could be: commando raids, other sorts of covert actions, bribery, clever diplomacy, and so forth–not to mention purely defensive measures that don’t feel as sweet as revenge but might save more lives on both sides.
Here is the fruit of the Israeli attack on Hamas in the Gaza: