Tag Archives: Israel Palestine

Political Rants

All hell.

This is a week for the books. Two major conflicts going to hell in a handbasket at the same time; god help us. One at a time …

Re: Israel / Palestine: See all previous commentsPalestine. The IDF ground war has begun. At least “war” is what our media in the U.S. call this, but it’s a very misleading term. This is an attack by one of the most powerful military machines in the world against an impoverished, stateless, poorly armed populace. Our television, radio, and newsprint journalists typically describe it as a conflict between Israel and Hamas, but the attack is on the Palestinian people, and it is they who suffer, with over 200 dead as of this writing. Four boys blown to bits on a beach, and Netanyahu is just getting started.

The act of telling civilians in northern Gaza to flee their homes in itself is a flagrant violation of the U.N. charter. What does our constitutional lawyer, Nobel laureate president have to say? The same three statements he always makes in these circumstances: (1) Israel has the right to defend itself; (2) No nation can tolerate having missiles targeting their cities; (3) Isn’t that “Iron Dome” defense shield we helped them build totally awesome? Here’s how to order yours.

I’m not certain, but I think (2) galls me the most. Couldn’t you say that about Palestine? They get bombs dropped on them all the time, not to mention settlements built on their land, checkpoints everywhere they go, regular killings of its citizens by a vicious foreign army of occupation, etc. What “state” would tolerate that?

Ukraine. I won’t say too much about this; only that the shooting down of the airliner is horrible beyond belief, and it’s just the sort of thing that happens when conflicts spin out of control. This story has sucked all of the air out of the room with regard to the news media. Chris Matthews on MSNBC was practically frothing at the mouth, playing tapes of Reagan excoriating the USSR on national television and saying the “Gipper” spoke for all of us back in 1983. The hell he did. At that time, his minions in Central America were eviscerating more innocents each week than were killed on KAL 007, so he can stow the high moral tone.

Hope to post next week … if our liberal friends don’t get us blown up before then.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Kids’ crusade.

The Israeli war machine is cranking at nearly full bore now, with something approaching 100 Palestinians killed in several days of air strikes, a ground invasion and re-occupation of Gaza threatened, and I’m sure quite a bit else that doesn’t rise to the level of mainstream reportage here in the United States. This is being characterized as a “war”, albeit an “asymmetric” one, but I don’t know how you call something a war when only one side has an actual military … that is, the fourth or fifth most powerful military in the world. The other side has very primitive rockets that they obviously can’t hit the broad side of a barn with.

Targeted.I’ll be clear, for what it’s worth: firing rockets into southern and central Israel is not only wrong, it’s strategically idiotic. But this nearly uncontrolled act of violence is a response to the ongoing assault against Palestinians, from the massive crackdown in the West Bank on the pretext of the 3 Israelis being kidnapped and murdered, to the continual expansion of settlements and other occupation infrastructure, to the steady incarceration, wounding, and yes, killing of Palestinians, young and old, in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

This assault on Gaza is just the latest chapter of the Israeli government’s practice of demonstrating their willingness to kill Palestinians in large numbers. Netanyahu has built his entire career on this, catering to some of the worst tendencies of his electorate.  More than 1,500 children under the age of 18 have been killed by the IDF since 2001. Several more have died in the last few days. Netanyahu blames Hamas, but it is he who drops bombs on one of the most densely populated place on Earth. You should expect to be held responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions. All Bibi’s government talks about is self-defense, but this is a very one-sided “war”. Must you survive by murder?

Netanyahu is a lot like Assad: He only knows one thing, and that thing is violence. This is not an intractable problem. It can be solved if the Israeli government acts responsibly, and abandons its claim to the 22% of historic Palestine that is not Israel.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Rest for one.

After an eight-year coma, Ariel Sharon died this past week. I say good for him. I am glad that he’s gone, and I say that without malice. No one deserves what he went through as a result of that stroke, not even a heartless killer. And I regret to say that that is exactly what he was, despite the graveside accolades.

Starting with the Qibya massacre in 1953, when troops led by Sharon killed almost 70 Palestinians, as well as destroying 45 homes and a mosque, Sharon made it his business to make the Arab inhabitants of Israel/Palestine miserable, homeless, or dead. He earned his title “The Bulldozer” Sharon: Gone but not forgotten.after the 1967 war when he pacified Gaza by destroying thousands of homes. While Sharon is hailed as a hero of the 1973 war – a war resulting from the stalemate policy encouraged by super-genius Henry Kissinger – he is probably best remembered for his role in the murderous 1982 invasion of Lebanon, in the midst of that country’s civil war, culminating in the massacre of Palestinians by Israeli-allied Christian militias in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, then under the control of the IDF.

That might have ended his public career, but it’s hard to keep a good killer down. Even though he was found to be substantially responsible for the deaths of the refugees in Beirut, he was back in subsequent Likud governments as minister without portfolio, then later as housing minister under Netanyahu’s first government in the mid-nineties. I recall his exhortation to settlers on the West Bank at one point during that period that they should “take every hilltop” – this from a man now hailed as one who was willing to trade land for peace.

Sharon’s tenure as Prime Minister was launched by his provocative visit to the “Dome of the Rock” in East Jerusalem, sparking the second Intifada. He used massive force to crush the uprising, reaching into his bulldozer bag of tricks, sending IDF soldiers into neighborhoods and schools in the West Bank, and basically burning the place down. Sharon pushed the separation wall, which is designed to lock in the Israeli government’s maximalist land claims on the West Bank. His much heralded evacuation of settlers from Gaza was a farce – those settlements were never anything more than a chip to be traded away in negotiations. And it was Sharon who chose the current PA leader Abu Mazen – insisted upon it, once Arafat was out of the way.

Rest in peace, big fella. Your legacy lives on.