Here we go again: Israel plans ground invasion of Gaza

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Re: Here we go again: Israel plans ground invasion of Gaza

Postby conniption » Fri Aug 08, 2014 3:23 pm

Alternet

Noam Chomsky: The Nightmare in Gaza

"There is no place in the prison of Gaza safe from Israeli sadism."

August 7, 2014

Amid all the horrors unfolding in the latest Israeli offensive in Gaza, Israel’s goal is simple: quiet-for-quiet, a return to the norm.

For the West Bank, the norm is that Israel continues its illegal construction of settlements and infrastructure so that it can integrate into Israel whatever might be of value, meanwhile consigning Palestinians to unviable cantons and subjecting them to repression and violence.

For Gaza, the norm is a miserable existence under a cruel and destructive siege that Israel administers to permit bare survival but nothing more.

The latest Israeli rampage was set off by the brutal murder of three Israeli boys from a settler community in the occupied West Bank. A month before, two Palestinian boys were shot dead in the West Bank city of Ramallah. That elicited little attention, which is understandable, since it is routine.

“The institutionalized disregard for Palestinian life in the West helps explain not only why Palestinians resort to violence,” Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani reports, “but also Israel’s latest assault on the Gaza Strip.”

In an interview, human rights lawyer Raji Sourani, who has remained in Gaza through years of Israeli brutality and terror, said, “The most common sentence I heard when people began to talk about cease-fire: Everybody says it’s better for all of us to die and not go back to the situation we used to have before this war. We don’t want that again. We have no dignity, no pride; we are just soft targets, and we are very cheap. Either this situation really improves or it is better to just die. I am talking about intellectuals, academics, ordinary people: Everybody is saying that.”

In January 2006, Palestinians committed a major crime: They voted the wrong way in a carefully monitored free election, handing control of Parliament to Hamas.

The media constantly intone that Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In reality, Hamas leaders have repeatedly made it clear that Hamas would accept a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus that has been blocked by the U.S. and Israel for 40 years.

In contrast, Israel is dedicated to the destruction of Palestine, apart from some occasional meaningless words, and is implementing that commitment.

The crime of the Palestinians in January 2006 was punished at once. The U.S. and Israel, with Europe shamefully trailing behind, imposed harsh sanctions on the errant population and Israel stepped up its violence.

The U.S. and Israel quickly initiated plans for a military coup to overthrow the elected government. When Hamas had the effrontery to foil the plans, the Israeli assaults and the siege became far more severe.

There should be no need to review again the dismal record since. The relentless siege and savage attacks are punctuated by episodes of “mowing the lawn,” to borrow Israel’s cheery expression for its periodic exercises in shooting fish in a pond as part of what it calls a “war of defense.”

Once the lawn is mowed and the desperate population seeks to rebuild somehow from the devastation and the murders, there is a cease-fire agreement. The most recent cease-fire was established after Israel’s October 2012 assault, called Operation Pillar of Defense.

Though Israel maintained its siege, Hamas observed the cease-fire, as Israel concedes. Matters changed in April of this year when Fatah and Hamas forged a unity agreement that established a new government of technocrats unaffiliated with either party.

Israel was naturally furious, all the more so when even the Obama administration joined the West in signaling approval. The unity agreement not only undercuts Israel’s claim that it cannot negotiate with a divided Palestine but also threatens the long-term goal of dividing Gaza from the West Bank and pursuing its destructive policies in both regions.

Something had to be done, and an occasion arose on June 12, when the three Israeli boys were murdered in the West Bank. Early on, the Netanyahu government knew that they were dead, but pretended otherwise, which provided the opportunity to launch a rampage in the West Bank, targeting Hamas.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed to have certain knowledge that Hamas was responsible. That too was a lie.

One of Israel’s leading authorities on Hamas, Shlomi Eldar, reported almost at once that the killers very likely came from a dissident clan in Hebron that has long been a thorn in the side of Hamas. Eldar added that “I’m sure they didn’t get any green light from the leadership of Hamas, they just thought it was the right time to act.”

The 18-day rampage after the kidnapping, however, succeeded in undermining the feared unity government, and sharply increasing Israeli repression. Israel also conducted dozens of attacks in Gaza, killing five Hamas members on July 7.

Hamas finally reacted with its first rockets in 19 months, providing Israel with the pretext for Operation Protective Edge on July 8.

By July 31, around 1,400 Palestinians had been killed, mostly civilians, including hundreds of women and children. And three Israeli civilians. Large areas of Gaza had been turned into rubble. Four hospitals had been attacked, each another war crime.

Israeli officials laud the humanity of what it calls “the most moral army in the world,” which informs residents that their homes will be bombed. The practice is “sadism, sanctimoniously disguising itself as mercy,” in the words of Israeli journalist Amira Hass: “A recorded message demanding hundreds of thousands of people leave their already targeted homes, for another place, equally dangerous, 10 kilometers away.”

In fact, there is no place in the prison of Gaza safe from Israeli sadism, which may even exceed the terrible crimes of Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009.

The hideous revelations elicited the usual reaction from the most moral president in the world, Barack Obama: great sympathy for Israelis, bitter condemnation of Hamas and calls for moderation on both sides.

When the current attacks are called off, Israel hopes to be free to pursue its criminal policies in the occupied territories without interference, and with the U.S. support it has enjoyed in the past.

Gazans will be free to return to the norm in their Israeli-run prison, while in the West Bank, Palestinians can watch in peace as Israel dismantles what remains of their possessions.

That is the likely outcome if the U.S. maintains its decisive and virtually unilateral support for Israeli crimes and its rejection of the long-standing international consensus on diplomatic settlement. But the future will be quite different if the U.S. withdraws that support.

In that case it would be possible to move toward the “enduring solution” in Gaza that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for, eliciting hysterical condemnation in Israel because the phrase could be interpreted as calling for an end to Israel’s siege and regular attacks. And — horror of horrors — the phrase might even be interpreted as calling for implementation of international law in the rest of the occupied territories.

Forty years ago Israel made the fateful decision to choose expansion over security, rejecting a full peace treaty offered by Egypt in return for evacuation from the occupied Egyptian Sinai, where Israel was initiating extensive settlement and development projects. Israel has adhered to that policy ever since.

If the U.S. decided to join the world, the impact would be great. Over and over, Israel has abandoned cherished plans when Washington has so demanded. Such are the relations of power between them.

Furthermore, Israel by now has little recourse, after having adopted policies that turned it from a country that was greatly admired to one that is feared and despised, policies it is pursuing with blind determination today in its march toward moral deterioration and possible ultimate destruction.

Could U.S. policy change? It’s not impossible. Public opinion has shifted considerably in recent years, particularly among the young, and it cannot be completely ignored.

For some years there has been a good basis for public demands that Washington observe its own laws and cut off military aid to Israel. U.S. law requires that “no security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”

Israel most certainly is guilty of this consistent pattern, and has been for many years.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, author of this provision of the law, has brought up its potential applicability to Israel in specific cases, and with a well-conducted educational, organizational and activist effort such initiatives could be pursued successively.

That could have a very significant impact in itself, while also providing a springboard for further actions to compel Washington to become part of “the international community” and to observe international law and norms.

Nothing could be more significant for the tragic Palestinian victims of many years of violence and repression.

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Re: Here we go again: Israel plans ground invasion of Gaza

Postby Morty » Sun Aug 17, 2014 5:48 am

Why Israel lost
Paul Rogers 5 August 2014

After its four-week bombardment, a three-day ceasefire reveals that the ground has shifted under Israel.

A new, seventy-two-hour ceasefire in Gaza began to take effect on the morning of 5 August 2014. Whether or not it lasts, both the Israeli government and the Hamas leadership will need to claim success after twenty-eight days of bitter conflict that has left more than 1,800 Palestinians killed and thousands injured. Israeli politicians are saying that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have been able to withdraw from Gaza following the destruction of the infiltration tunnels, and that the air-force is still able to hit targets throughout the territory. The implication is that Israel has good cause to claim success.

A closer look suggests otherwise. Three incidents on particular days during the war indicate why.

The first was twelve days into the war, 20 July, when the IDF was moving ground-troops into Gaza, aiming partly to continue destroying rocket-launchers but also to uncover the tunnels. On that day alone, the elite Golani brigade lost thirteen men killed and well over fifty injured. The dead included a battalion deputy commander and the wounded the brigade’s commanding officer, Colonel Ghassan Alian (see “Gaza: Context and Consequences”, Oxford Research Group, 31 July 2014). The overall level of resistance, and especially the abilities of the Hamas paramilitaries, came as a shock to the IDF, even as it was coming to realise that the tunnels constituted a far more serious problem than expected (see "Israel vs Hamas, a war of surprises", 24 July 2014).

The second incident, on 28 July, confirmed this. By then, large numbers of IDF personnel were in Gaza, the emphasis being very much on detecting and destroying the tunnels. Yet in the midst of this intensive operation a Hamas group was in an extraordinary way able to use an undetected tunnel, emerge on the Israeli side of the border, and attack a border post (not civilians in a kibbutz, Nahal Oz, as was reported at an early stage). The group killed five young Israeli soldiers, all sergeants aged 18 to 21, who were on a leadership-training exercise.

The third incident, on 30 July, was the shelling of a United Nations school in the Jabaliya refugee camp, which killed twenty-one people, including children asleep at the time (it was 4.40 a.m.) and injuring scores. The attack is reported to have been carried out using long-range artillery, and to have been aimed at Hamas paramilitaries threatening an IDF unit attempting to destroy a tunnel entrance, within 320 metres of the school. A UN review found that ten shells were fired over approximately five minutes, three hitting the school and two more striking within fifty metres (see Ben Hubbard & Jodi Rudoreren, “Questions over deadly barrage on shelter”, New York Times, 5 August 2014).

At the time the school was sheltering 3,220 people in a twenty-four-room complex, part of a much wider UN sheltering programme catering for 260,000 people in ninety schools and other facilities. It was one of six UN sites hit during the four-week war, provoking severe criticism that using inaccurate long-range artillery against targets in densely populated urban areas is (at least) highly questionable (see "America, Israel, Gaza: missiles and politics", 19 July 2014).

The three incidents together highlight major difficulties for the Israeli government. The shelter attack, for example, is amplified by the new social media. Even since the last major ground-assault into Gaza - Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09 - there has been rapid development of instant smartphone video-recording and distribution techniques.

The effect is twofold: to spread directly and worldwide graphic images of the impact on civilians, and to make western media outlets more likely to show that same impact in greater detail. Support for the war inside Israel has remained strong throughout, but the country's reputation has suffered considerably across the world, and some major western news outlets that would normally be broadly supportive express huge doubts about the long-term consequences of Israel's assault (see ("Israel and the world: us and them", Economist, 1 August 2014).

The war beneath

Even so, it might at first sight seem to be stretching it to talk of Israel “losing” this war. A fuller analysis does however point in this direction. Recall the stated initial aim, which was to suppress rocket fire. This has simply not happened, amid strong suspicions that Hamas and other militias may have expended less than half of their arsenals; the IDF itself estimates that Hamas still has 3,000 rockets available.

The second aim was to destroy the infiltration tunnels, and here too the operation is flawed. As of 3 August the IDF had uncovered forty tunnels, invariably with multiple access-points, far more than anticipated. Moreover, Hamas strategists will have prepared for just this kind of IDF operation. Building tunnels deep underground and completely back-filling the entry-points would make them difficult if not impossible to detect; with knowledge of the approximate location of the incomplete tunnels, they can be found, opened up and completed after the withdrawal of IDF forces.

It is not commonly realised just how remarkable are the tunnelling abilities that have been acquired in Gaza. A single infiltration tunnel ran for 2.4 kilometres, was twenty metres below ground level and utilised 350 tons of concrete in the lining (see Shane Harris, “Extensive Hamas Tunnel Network Points to Israeli Intelligence Failure”, Foreign Policy, 3 August 2014).

The explanation for this capability is in part the huge experience of building access tunnels for commercial transit under the border with Egypt over recent years. A report on Al-Jazeera says that over 500 of these tunnels have been constructed to connect Gaza with Egypt, with 7,000 Gazans employed in their building. Even if the IDF had destroyed all the Hamas infiltration tunnels, which is highly unlikely, constructing more would not take long. It is the knowledge and the trained workforce that count here.

In addition, perhaps the least recognised aspect of Protective Edge has been the level of Israeli casualties, which has far exceeded initial fears. (The Palestinian losses - over 1,800 killed and 9,000 injured, more than 68% of them civilians - are of course much greater). A comparison with Cast Lead in 2008-09 is instructive. In that operation the IDF killed 1,440 Palestinians over twenty-three days, and lost nine soldiers in combat, as well as four in a friendly-fire incident. This time the IDF has so far lost sixty-four soldiers in twenty-eight days. Military censorship has allowed reporting of deaths but very little information on injuries, but an informed Israeli source puts these at over 400.

The Jewish population of Israel is about one-tenth of the population of the UK. This means that the proportional losses in twenty-eight days exceed the UK’s combined losses in six years' fighting in Iraq and twelve years in Afghanistan. In a revealing assessment, a retired United States army major-general, Robert H Scales, and a defence analyst, Douglas A Ollivant, put it this way:

“Gone are the loose and fleeting groups of fighters seen during Operation Cast Lead in 2008. In Gaza they have been fighting in well-organized, tightly bound teams under the authority of well-connected, well-informed commanders. Units stand and fight from building hideouts and tunnel entrances. They wait for the Israelis to pass them by before ambushing them from the rear” (see “Terrorist armies fight smarter and deadlier than ever”, Washington Post, 4 August 2014).

Extending their analysis to wider regional developments, including the Islamists in Iraq, they deliver a somewhat bombastic concluding paragraph that (given the source) is still worth quoting:

“What we see in Gaza, Syria and Iraq should serve as a cautionary tale for any Beltway guru calling for a return of U.S. forces to Iraq. U.S. soldiers and Marines are still the global gold standard, but their comparative advantage has diminished. As terrorist groups turn into armies, pairing their fanatical dedication with newly acquired tactical skills, renewed intervention might generate casualties on a new scale - as the Israelis have been painfully learning.”

On 4 August, the Israelis first offered a short ceasefire and have now agreed a three-day pause. This contrasts markedly with prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s insistence - just a day earlier - on "completing the mission". Perhaps the sudden change stems from reports from Israeli ambassadors around the world, perhaps the Barack Obama administration finally exerted pressure. But perhaps it was the IDF commanders who had a much clearer vision than their political leaders and simply said they should declare victory and withdraw while they could.
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Re: Here we go again: Israel plans ground invasion of Gaza

Postby 8bitagent » Sun Aug 17, 2014 4:34 pm

This is why I still feel Chomsky is one of the best voices on foreign policy and morality today. His words are absolutely devastating. And he didn't even need to get into the endless checkpoint/freeway spiderwebbing,
ancient generational family orchird/farm razing programs, etc.

But one thing more people need to point out: the oil rich Arab nations in the Middle East turned their back on the Palestinians, if they ever cared. Privately they're all buddy buddy with Israel.
Something the hardcore jihadi groups gulf state nations fund probably don't want to know. It's more important for these psychopathic fat cat Arab nations to stoke, arm and finance groups like ISIS
than it is to try and help the Palestinians...tho boy, do rich Sunnis and their terrorist proxies love to keep pretending they're fighting for the plight of Palestinians.

I read an article where even the support of Shiite Iran to Sunni Palestine/Gaza has dried up. You don't even hear much about Lebanon/Hezbollah. Meanwhile the genocide by both the Bashir and opposing ISIS groups continues in Syria. Shit's such a mess:(
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
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Re: Here we go again: Israel plans ground invasion of Gaza

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Aug 17, 2014 7:51 pm

As Repression Escalates on US Campuses, an Account of My Ordeal With the Israel Lobby and UC
Sunday, 17 August 2014 00:00
By William I Robinson, Truthout | News Analysis

A building in Rafah destroyed by the Israelis during Israel's assault on Gaza in January, 2009. Shortly after Israel concluded its month-long Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, Professor William Robinson was targeted for repression for including material critical of Israel in his course materials.

Professor William Robinson of UCSB was the target of a campaign of intimidation, silencing, and political repression that included techniques described in the "Hasbara handbook" by the Israel lobby in contravention of academic freedom and university rules. He describes the experience here.
The latest Israeli carnage in Gaza has provoked worldwide condemnation of Israel for its continued war crimes and its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. In response, the Israeli state and its allies and agents are stepping up campaigns of intimidation, silencing, and political repression against opponents of its policies. Israel may continue to win military battles - after all, it has the fifth most powerful military on the planet - but it is losing the war for legitimacy. In the wake of its bloody attacks on schools, hospitals and United Nations refugee centers in Gaza, support has intensified around the world for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. The BDS campaign in the United States has taken off, above all, on university campuses, which is why the Israel lobby is so intent on targeting academia.
Five years ago, I was attacked by the Israel lobby in the United States, led by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and nearly run from the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), where I work as a professor of sociology, global and Latin American studies. The campaign against me lasted some six months and garnered worldwide attention, but I am hardly alone. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of professors and student groups have been harassed and persecuted for speaking out against Israeli occupation and apartheid and in support of the Palestinian struggle. Some of these cases have been high profile in the media and others have gone relatively unknown. The latest victim, Steven Salaita, a respected scholar and professor of English literature and American Indian Studies, was fired in August from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for denouncing on social media the most recent Israeli atrocities in Gaza.
The persecution to which I was subjected involved a litany of harassment, slander, defamation of character and all kinds of threats against the university by outside forces if I was not dismissed, as well as hate mail and death threats from unknown sources. More insidiously, it involved a shameful collaboration between a number of university officials and outside forces from the Israel lobby as the university administration stood by silently, making a mockery of academic freedom.
The disciplinary procedure initiated against me by UCSB officials involved a host of irregularities, violations of the university's own procedures, breaches of confidentiality, denial of due process, conflicts of interest, failure of disclosure, improper political surveillance, abuses of power and position, unwarranted interference in curriculum and teaching and so on. As I would discover during the course of the ordeal, individuals inside the university and in positions of authority had linked up with agents of the lobby outside the university in setting out to prosecute me.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of professors and student groups have been harassed and persecuted for speaking out against Israeli occupation and apartheid and in support of the Palestinian struggle.
I may well have been run from the university if it were not for graduate and undergraduate students (together with a handful of committed colleagues), who early on in the persecution set up the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom that launched a worldwide campaign in my defense. This in turn sparked a good portion of the faculty into action, several months into the campaign of persecution against me, to defend my academic freedom. This campaign also generated widespread support for me off campus, pressure that eventually forced the university to back down and the Israel lobby to give up and move on to targets of harassment elsewhere, thereby demonstrating that this lobby is not invincible, and indeed, is increasingly vulnerable. The entire story is documented on the committee's website. During the course of the six-month campaign the committee and I were able to piece together the events that are here reconstructed - in part and in brief - to the best of my knowledge.
Operation Cast Lead and the Israel lobby's Inside-Outside Strategy
On January 18, 2009, Israel concluded its month-long Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, which left 1,400 Palestinians dead and thousands more wounded, up to 80 percent of them civilians. The following day, one week into our winter quarter classes, I forwarded to the LISTSERV for my course on the sociology of globalization optional reading materials drawn from the international press for classroom discussion that evening on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The reading materials included among other items a Reuters news article reporting that a Jewish editor of the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle had been sacked for publishing an article by a Jewish-American journalist who visited the West Bank and denounced the occupation. They also included a photo-essay that had been circulating on the internet and that juxtaposed Israeli atrocities in Gaza and Nazi atrocities in Warsaw, along with a commentary of my own, including this paragraph:
The Israeli army is the fifth most potent military machine in the world and one that is backed by a propaganda machine that rivals and may well surpass that of the US, a machine that dares to make the ludicrous and obnoxious claim that opposition to the policies and practices of the Israeli state is anti-Semitism. It should be no surprise that a state founded on the negation of a people was one of the principal backers of the apartheid South African state not to mention of the Latin American military dictatorships until those regimes collapsed under mass protest, and today arms, trains, and advises military and paramilitary forces in Colombia, one of the world's worst human rights violators.
My course on the sociology of globalization takes up vital and controversial issues that impact global society and each class meeting starts with a discussion of some current affair, such as Operation Cast Lead. However, two students of the 80 enrolled in the course, whom I have never met and did not know, apparently did not feel that they should receive any course material that challenged their beliefs. Instead of attending class that evening, they made contact with the Hillel organization on campus who then took them to meet with the ADL, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, Stand With Us, and several other Jewish organizations and faculty members of campus. The ADL and these other organizations then went into action.
External monitoring and censorship of course conduct is a violation of faculty academic freedom and was not a legitimate part of the university's complaint procedure.
First, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Zionist organization in Los Angeles, sat down with one of the students to film her, with her face blotted out (the film stated the student "has asked to protect her identity for fear of reprisal"), as she claimed she was intimidated by my course material, and then posted the film on YouTube under the title "Jewish Students Shocked by UCSB Professor's Demonizing Email." The Wiesenthal Center called for me to be punished and accused me of anti-Semitism until they learned that I am of Jewish background, and then charged instead that I was a "self-hating Jew."
Next, the students met with the local ADL chapter in Santa Barbara, and were apparently instructed by the ADL and its affiliated groups to contact the Charges Office at UCSB and lodge a grievance against me. The Charges Office is set up by the University to receive grievances over possible violation by faculty members of the Faculty Code of Conduct (e.g., sexual harassment, racial bias, etc.). The Charges Office is expected to investigate possible violations, and to dismiss frivolous charges, that is, charges that clearly do not involve a violation of the code.
What I did not know at the time, but would soon learn, is that two of the three officers of the Charges Office belonged to the Zionist community in Santa Barbara that had already begun to combine against me, and that at least one of them, Aaron Ettenberg, had already made contact with the outside groups working with the students. Ettenberg, was a former president of the Santa Barbara B'nai B'rith, the parent organization of the ADL. Neither of these two revealed their affiliations or recused themselves due to the blatant conflict of interests. To the contrary, we would soon learn that Ettenberg met with Rabbi Arthur Gross-Schaeffer, director at the time of the Santa Barbara chapter of Hillel, a Jewish organization linked with the ADL, and an outspoken leader of the pro-Israeli Jewish community in Santa Barbara, to consult with him about my case prior to the university's decision to investigate me.
This explains why, on February 9 the director of the local ADL Chapter Cynthia Silverman sent me a letter protesting my course materials and accusing me of violating a number of items of the Faculty Code of Conduct. How did the ADL come into possession of my course material? Copies of this ADL letter were sent to my department chair, to UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang, and to then-UC President Mark Yudof (himself an outspoken Zionist). The campaign now picked up steam. Three days later, Martin Scharlemann, who was the chair of the Charges Office, summoned me "urgently" to meet with him to discuss the complaint that the students had lodged with the Charges Office. I was by told by Scharlemann's staff assistant, Stephanie Smagala, that it was "imperative" that I come down that very afternoon due to "an urgent situation." I did not understand at the time why such alarm, why Scharlemann was treating this as an emergency situation, whereas this was but a routine student grievance evidently not involving any urgent matter such as sexual assault, possible violence, or anything remotely of that nature, and strictly referred to two students' disagreement with the content of course material, a course that they had dropped.
At the same time as the university's Charges Office was organizing its prosecution, I was contacted through a mediator by Rabbi Gross-Schaeffer, who had previously met with Charges Office member Aaron Ettenberg. This mediator, a colleague of mine, then set up a confidential meeting between the two of us. "We [the Israel lobby] will pull back if you meet our conditions," he told me. You need to "ask for repentance, to apologize for what you have done." I told Gross-Schaeffer that I had done nothing morally objectionable and more so, I had not violated any rules, codes or procedures at the university and was acting fully within my rights of academic freedom. "Well apparently there are people at the university that disagree with you and are prepared to move forward against you if you do not repent," he replied.
Contriving Charges
The charges against me were entirely contrived. There is absolutely nothing in the Faculty Code of Conduct that even remotely suggests that my course material violated any item of the code. In my February meeting with Scharlemann and his staff assistant Smagala, the two asked several questions entirely inappropriate and outside of their jurisdiction, including as to whether I had placed on the course syllabus the topic of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, which suggested that the two believed they were empowered as part of the complaint procedure to examine the content of my course and to determine what was and was not relevant to that content.
Such external monitoring and censorship of course conduct is a violation of faculty academic freedom and was not a legitimate part of the university's complaint procedure. Although the materials I distributed were relevant for my course, even if they had not been, their inclusion in the course reading material would not have violated the Faculty Code of Conduct. Neither Scharlemann nor Smagala had any right to assess what was relevant for my courses on globalization (or indeed any other topics of sociology).
The charges amounted to a blatant attempt at political censorship and an illegitimate use of the university's grievance procedure.
These gross violations by the Charges Office, as well as the contact between the Charges Office and outside pressure groups from the Israel lobby and other irregularities and violations of university rules and procedures as this persecution unfolded were brought to the attention of university officials of the highest levels, right up to Chancellor Yang and Executive Vice Chancellor Gene Lucas, upon whom it was incumbent to defend my academic freedom and the integrity of the university. Yang chose, however, to ignore my insistence that he and the university defend my academic freedom and put an end to what was becoming a charade. In fact, he expressed more anxiety about the harassment campaign organized by Stand With Us and its members' threats to withdraw funding from the university if I were not fully prosecuted.
A week later, Scharlemann notified me that the two students had filed formal written complaints and I was expected to reply and defend myself. The farcical and politicized nature of the attacks against me now became apparent. Here is an excerpt from one of the student complaints (the full complaints are posted on the website):
An important issue is the distinction between the legitimate criticism of policies and practices of the State of Israel, and commentary that assumes an anti-Semitic character. The demonization of Israel, or vilification of Israeli leaders sometimes through comparisons with Nazi leaders, and through the use of Nazi symbols to caricature them, indicates an anti-Semitic bias rather than a valid criticism of policy. I found these parallel images intimidating, disgusting, and beyond a teacher role as an educator in the university system. I feel that something must be done so other students don't have to go through the same intimidating disgust I went through . . . He has also violated the universities policies by 'participating in or deliberately abetting disruption, interference, or intimidation in the classroom (Part II, Section A, Number 5). Robinson has done so through this intimidating email which had pushed me to withdraw from this course and take another one . . . By Robinson using his university email account he attaches his thoughts with that of the university and they become a single entity sharing the same ideas."
The second letter repeats the accusation of anti-Semitism, a definition lifted verbatim from the US State Department and then continues:
In all the years of schooling and higher education I have never experienced an abuse of an educator position . . . To hide behind a computer and send this provocative email shows poor judgment and perhaps a warped personality. The classroom and the forum of which higher education is presented needs to be safe and guarded so the rights of individuals are respected. handle [sic] . . . The fact that the professor attached his views to the depiction of what my great grandparents and family experienced shows lack of sensitivity and awareness. What he did was criminal because he took my trust and invaded something that is very personal. I felt as if I have been violated by the professor. Yes I am aware of Anti-Semitism, but to abuse this position in an environment of higher education where I always thought it to be safe, until now, is intimidating. This professor should be stopped immediately from continuing to disseminate this information and be punished because his damage is irreversible.
The actual charges contained in the students' letters were simply absurd; they included a long list of charges copied straight from the Code of Conduct, including those against romantic relations with students, despite the fact that I had never met the students in question, and charges against the use of university property for commercial gain, which had no bearing whatsoever on the case. The letters of complaint, in fact, opened up with the bizarre charge that I actually violated my own right to present controversial material. They included the charge of discrimination, even though my only act for which the students submitted a grievance was to have sent reading material uniformly to the entire class, for which reason by definition discrimination was not involved. The litany of charges included also violations of the canons of intellectual honesty, speaking in private capacity while creating the impression that I represented the university, and so on. And all these accusations were generated by nothing more than an optional reading sent by internet to the entire course LISTSERV and that represented some 1/10th of 1 percent of the assigned reading material for the course.
"Apparently, they have decided enough vulnerability exists in the university community . . . They're making this (the Robinson case) into a litmus test to silence criticism of Israel."
In matter of fact, the students' grievance was based strictly on their objection to the content of course material. This fact, indeed, is not in dispute, as is apparent from the text of their letters. According to the University of California procedures, a grievance procedure is available to students who feel that they may have been disadvantaged, graded unfairly, or otherwise discriminated against on account of disagreements with the professor's views, not when the students merely disagree with a professor's views, or with the views expressed in course readings. To the contrary, the very preamble to the University's Faculty Code of Conduct states that the primary purpose of the code is to protect faculty's right to academic freedom, e.g., to protect faculty from frivolous complaints by students.
I was bewildered at the time as to why Scharlemann refused to reject the claims as frivolous. Given that there was no substantiation of the students' long list of complaints and that the only basis for the students' complaint was an optional reading they received by email that criticized the Israeli government as part of a course on global affairs, what could Scharlemann possibly have found in these student letters to have led him not to inform the students that it was frivolous? I only learned subsequently that behind Scharlemann and several other university officials involved in my persecution was the malicious intent of a web of individuals outside the university representing the Israel lobby and coordinating with the students and university officials.
For much of March and into April Scharlemann ignored my request for him to substantiate the basis of his decision to press forward rather than dismiss the case. The university waited more than two months before actually informing me of exactly what was the charge against me, that is, exactly what aspect of the Code of Conduct I was alleged to have violated. On April 5, Scharlemann sent to me what is known as a "charges sheet," which accused me of distributing "highly partisan" material to my students "accompanied by lurid photographs" and "was unexpected and without educational context," that I had engaged in "coercion of conscience" as a result of which "two enrolled students were too distraught to continue with the course."
In fact, the University's Faculty Code of Conduct nowhere states that course material must not be "partisan" or that "lurid" images are violations of the code. Indeed, not a single one of the charges against me are stipulated in the code as violations. The charges amounted to a blatant attempt at political censorship and an illegitimate use of the university's grievance procedure. I asked Scharlemann for explanations, e.g., what he meant by "lurid photos." In my letter requesting further explanation, I wrote:
'Lurid' is defined by Webster's as 'vivid in a harsh or shocking way.' In what way is the introduction of images vivid in a harsh or shocking way a violation of the Faculty Code of Conduct? Why would photos of military conflict not be 'harsh and shocking'? And why would their presentation in a University course be a violation of the Faculty Code of Conduct? . . . By suggesting that images that document shocking events and "partisan" material should not be introduced into a university course your charges sheet appears to advocate - beyond the suppression of academic freedom - outright political censorship. The Faculty Code of Conduct does not, in any way, proscribe "partisan" material or images that are vivid in a harsh and shocking way. To the contrary, the code establishes as the right of faculty the 'right to present controversial material relevant to a course of instruction' and its very Preamble states that the intent of the code is to protect academic freedom."
Scharlemann ignored my letter, and more seriously, so did all of the university administrators to whom I wrote demanding an explanation for this political persecution and demanding that the university protect and defend my academic freedom. Instead, this Charges Office proceeded to establish a special investigative and prosecutorial committee (known on my campus as an Ad Hoc Committee) to further investigate my alleged violations and apply possible sanctions.
Enter the ADL's (and Mossad's) Abraham Foxman
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), with 34 regional offices in North American, a staff of 400, and a $32 million annual budget, is one of the core organizations of the Israel lobby in the United States, exposed by US political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their study "The Israel lobby and US Foreign Policy." The ADL has a long and sordid history of spying on, slandering and vilifying critics of Israel -victims of its infiltration have included the NAACP, the ACLU, Greenpeace, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination League, and thousands of private citizens, among others - in cooperation with Israel's foreign intelligence service, Mossad. ADL director Abraham Foxman is an international lobbyist for Israel who has met frequently with national and world leaders, including all US presidents since Richard Nixon, and who brags that he has direct access to the office of the Israeli Prime Minister.
On March 19, Foxman arrived at UCSB for a meeting hosted by Religious Studies professor Richard Hecht and attended by Deans David Marshall and Michael Young and several faculty members. Cynthia Silverman by his side, Foxman demanded that the university take action against me. Some of the meeting participants told me that Foxman requested the meeting at UCSB for the sole purpose of demanding that university officials investigate me for introducing course materials critical of Israeli state policies. In fact, the only agenda item of this meeting was my case. History professor Harold Marcuse, who attended the meeting, later stated: "When the meeting started, Foxman quickly launched into what I would call a rant about what he said was an anti-Semitic email that professor Robinson sent to his class. We then had an open discussion about Foxman's comments and the charges against Robinson. In my recollection, that was the only thing we talked about at the meeting. Nothing else was discussed."
Alongside the ADL, the organization Stand With Us launched a nationwide and worldwide campaign to pressure the university to fire me, including a petition drive and a letter-writing campaign. Stand With Us' founding mission is to counter criticism of Israel on university campuses worldwide, according to its website. Created in 2001, its site openly calls college campuses a "modern-day battlefront" for Israel. "Today Israel faces a new global threat, one that is fought in the media, on university campuses, and in the court of public opinion," reads the Stand With Us home page, while its Bay Area chapter is even more candid: "Our mission is to stand up to anti-Israel speech wherever it may surface," reads the site. "We are (unofficially) representing the state of Israel."
In late 2008, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee announced that it would target US universities, especially big state universities, starting with the University of California.
Stand With Us representatives threatened a campaign to have pro-Israel donors cut off financial donations to UCSB if I were not prosecuted. For instance, Stand With Us sent a letter to Vice Chancellor Gene Lucas dated March 16 and posted at ww.standwithus.com. The letter states that Stand With Us board member Leah Yadegar was in contact with the two student complainants. It stated that Yadegar then "distributed the email widely to UCSB donors, media, and Jewish organizations, including Stand With US," and that Stand With US board member Howard Waldow, a UCSB donor, discussed my case with Chancellor Yang at a reception.
At the time, Roz Rothstein, international director for Stand With Us, told the UCSB student newspaper, The Daily Nexus, that the campaign against me could set a precedent for more action against Israel critics at other universities. My colleague Richard Falk, who was a visiting professor of global studies at UCSB and the UN's special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, commented at the time that Rothstein's remarks indicated a "disturbing" escalation in pro-Israel pressure on college campuses in general, and at UCSB in particular. "Apparently, they have decided enough vulnerability exists in the university community for them to mobilize pressure campaigns," Falk said. "They're making this (the Robinson case) into a litmus test to silence criticism of Israel."
Falk was right; the Israel lobby had made my case a litmus test. On the other hand, I was carried away by support from around the world as international pressure mounted on the university to put an end to my persecution. The university received letters in support of me and demanding that the charges be dropped from dozens of professional associations and community organizations, among them, the National Lawyers Guild, California Scholars for Academic Freedom, the Middle Eastern Studies Association of North America, the editorial board of the UK-based scholarly journal Race and Class, the Global Studies Association, and the March 25 Coalition, an immigrant rights coalition in Southern California. It also received petitions signed by thousands of people from around the United States and the world, and countless letters from individuals from all five continents, a sampling of which have been posted. The Committee to Defend Academic Freedom organized a teach-in on May 21 that left standing room only in the auditorium and media in attendance from around Southern California.
A Secret Absolution
The Ad Hoc Committee set up to investigate me in April concluded its investigation into me on May 15 and found that I was not in violation of the Faculty Code of Conduct. Yet Chancellor Yang kept these results secret from me and from the public for another six weeks, until June 24. Since Chancellor Yang and his immediate underlings, including Vice Chancellor Gene Lucas, ignored my correspondence with them, I do not know from the horse's mouth what their motives were for continuing to apply political pressure on me for another six weeks. Were they waiting for a major Jewish donation to the university to be consummated before publicly announcing their dismissal of the charges against me? Was the Israel lobby still conspiring on how to move forward in persecuting me?
On June 10, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education (FIRE), a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit, had come to my defense in the name of First Amendment rights and academic freedom. One of their Attorneys, Adam Kissel, wrote the chancellor warning him that if all charges against me were not dropped by 5 pm on June 24, his organization would launch a major media campaign and a law suit against the University of California. An hour or so before this deadline, the university chose to inform me of the decision, made six weeks earlier and kept secret, that the charges against me had already been dropped.
But the administration was also under mounting pressure from my colleagues. Spurred on by my students, whose mobilization in my defense included a sit-in at the chancellor's office and threats of more sit-ins, an international petition drive, and other public protests, my colleagues mobilized against the improprieties. Some 100 faculty members and 20 heads of departments signed a petition protesting the university's handling of the accusations against me. And on June 8, some 80 faculty members filled a Senate meeting and passed a motion to investigate the irregularities surrounding my case. By this time, my case had garnered worldwide media attention and the university was in the spotlight as public pressure mounted. Yet the university administration refused to put an end to the witch-hunt. Instead, Chancellor Yang sent me a message via an intermediary: "Stop embarrassing the university."
"Scholars whose work is critical of Israeli policies have been denied jobs, denied tenure, and in general have their lives made difficult not because of academic criteria, but because of political interference."
Following the dismissal of charges against me, I submitted a 40-page grievance to the UCSB Academic Senate. According to the Senate's bylaws, a committee should have investigated the litany of irregularities, violations of procedure, breaches of confidentiality, conflicts of interest, failure of disclosure, improper political surveillance, abuses of power and position, and other acts of misconduct against me as a faculty member, some of which has been discussed here and all of which can be found at the website, including original letters and documents pertaining to the case. Nonetheless, the Senate chose to investigate exactly one single violation - that of Ettenberg's undisclosed conflict of interest - and then exonerated him. How did they reach this decision to exonerate? According to the Senate's letter to me in response to my grievance, they simply asked him if he had a conflict of interest and he said he did not!
Whereas the allegations against me took just a few minutes to make, and the Senate investigation into breaches of my rights took but one word to dismiss, I had to suspend my research and professional activities and put on hold my personal life for the duration of the six months, in which I had to defend myself against frivolous allegations. Indeed, across the country whenever such persecutions are launched the burden falls on those that are targeted to defend themselves, often tying up the individual's time and life for months and generating great emotional stress.
UCSB has yet to honor my demand that the institution apologize for the ordeal it put me through and the damage done to my professional reputation.
Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels' Tactics on US Campuses
Yet that ordeal is but a fly in the face of the horrific crimes to which the Palestinians are subjected on a daily basis by Israeli occupation, apartheid, and periodic massacres. It is, in addition, something faced by dozens, perhaps hundreds, of faculty and students who chose not to back down in the face of McCarthyist repression in their commitment to speaking truth to power.
In late 2008, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee announced that it would target US universities, especially big state universities, starting with the University of California. AIPAC director Howard Kohr acknowledged at the 2009 annual convention the erosion of Israel's legitimacy, warning that there was a huge and growing international campaign against Israeli policies. "No longer is this campaign confined to the ravings of the political far left or far right," he said, "but increasingly it is entering the American mainstream."
In their 2009 article in Tikkun, University of California at Irvine professor David Theo Goldberg and UCLA professor Saree Makdsisi noted that "no fewer than 33 distinct organizations - including AIPAC, the Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Congress, and the Jewish National Fund - are gathered together today as members or affiliates of the Israel on Campus Coalition," whose stated objective is to generate "a pro-active, pro-Israeli agenda on campus. There is accordingly, disproportionate and unbalanced intervention on campuses across the country by a coalition of well-funded organizations, who have no time for - and even less interest in - the niceties of intellectual exchange and academic process." They note that "scholars whose work is critical of Israeli policies have been denied jobs, denied tenure, and in general have their lives made difficult not because of academic criteria, but because of political interference."
They go on to observe how this apparatus systematically uses disinformation and misinformation, blatant fabrications, character assassination, and so on. The objective is not to engage in rational dialogue based on exchange of ideas in the search for truth, but "to create an environment of fear and intimidation on and off campuses, in which any criticism of Israeli policies is subject to sanctions and censorship." Then they note:
The Hasbara Handbook: Promoting Israel on Campus, which is distributed to campus activists by organizations like Stand With Us, explains that it is often better to score points than to engage in actual arguments, and offers an explanation for how, in its own words, 'to score points whilst avoiding debate'. Point-scoring, the Hasbara Handbook explains, "works because most audience members fail to analyze what they hear. Rather, they register only a key few points, and form a vague 'impression' of whose argument was stronger." Part of the strategy is to recycle the same claims over and again, in as many settings as possible. 'If people hear something often enough,' the document points out, 'they come to believe it.
Needless to say, this was precisely the tactic developed by the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, which he called "the big lie." Goldberg and Makdsisi continue:
The Hasbara Handbook offers several other propaganda devices, all of which can be seen vividly at play in the coverage of the UCLA Gaza panel and other similar events, including again, the Robinson affair. 'Creating negative connotations by name calling is done to try to get the audience to reject a person or idea on the basis of negative associations, without allowing a real examination of that person or idea,' the handbook states with remarkable bluntness, in advocating this tactic. It also suggests using the opposite of name-calling, to defend Israel by what it calls the deployment of 'glittering generalities' (words like ‘freedom', ‘civilization', ‘democracy') to describe the country, manipulating the audiences' fears, etc.
I can attest that these Goebbelsian tactics - when backed by the economic resources and political influence of the Israel lobby and in the context of US state support for, and sponsorship of, the Israeli Zionist project - are often effective. Such tactics cower many people, not just politicians, but academics who become scared to even mention any criticism of Israel or support for Palestinians in their classrooms, their research and their public appearances. I see this almost every day in my own professional work in academia, and of course in the media.
We are morally compelled to speak out against injustice, in this case, against Israeli repression, colonialism, and apartheid, even when it means we run the risk of facing the wrath of the powerful, on our campuses and in the larger society.
In my case, while some colleagues came out courageously and publicly in my defense (and many were aroused by the student mobilization to come out in support of academic freedom yet still kept themselves arms-length from me), many others, it seemed to me almost overnight, started to avoid me once the lobby placed a scarlet letter on my forehead. I became a pariah on campus. Some colleagues would literally turn the other way when they saw me; others would comment in hushed tones as I approached. Cowardly administrators avoided me like the plague, fearful of damaging their own status or security, principles-be-damned.
Political repression of the nature executed by the Israeli lobby and its agents and supporters can wreck lives and careers and leads to self-censorship among journalists, politicians, academics and other public figures. It results in a kind of perverted hegemony in the Gramscian sense - the forging of a coerced consensus, or at least the appearance of one, imposed by intimidation and backed up by the threat of sanctions.
However, that hegemony has been eroding in the face of Israeli atrocities, defiant intellectuals committed to justice such as (most recently) Steven Salaita, and the spread of the BDS campaign and other movements in support of Palestinian rights. My own case shows that Israel lobby is not omnipotent; it does not enjoy uncontested power. To the contrary, those who choose to side with justice and are willing to speak truth to power may find that they are swept away by support from all corners of the globe.
Finally, a word on academic freedom: When academic freedom is suppressed, the university becomes an indoctrination camp where truth is subordinated to ideology and power. Academic freedom is the life blood of the university. Any attack on such freedom exercises a chilling effect on the ability of the university community to engage in open debate and exchange of ideas on contemporary matters. Free speech and academic freedom are such threats to the Israel lobby, and indeed, to all anti-democratic, authoritarian, or totalitarian projects, precisely because it proscribes censorship and prohibits any attempt to limit what is and is not acceptable to research, to teach, to question and to debate, and precisely because academic freedom thrives on controversy and critical thinking.
It is no wonder academic freedom was suppressed in Nazi Germany, in apartheid South Africa, in military dictatorships in Latin America, in the former Soviet Union, in the United States - under McCarthyism and at many other times, such as the present moment - and elsewhere. Our mission as educators is to help develop citizens who can think critically and independently on the burning issues of our day, who can search out the truth without fear of what they will find. I believe this search for the truth inevitably leads us to a position of justice; silence in the face of social injustice is complicity in that injustice. We are morally compelled to speak out against injustice, in this case, against Israeli repression, colonialism, and apartheid, even when it means we run the risk of facing the wrath of the powerful, on our campuses and in the larger society.
The list would be very long of those I must thank for their principled support in 2009 for my right to academic freedom and free speech. I would like to acknowledge above all sociology graduate students at UCSB Yousef Baker (now Dr. Baker) and Maryam Griffin (soon to be Dr. Griffin), UCSB sociology professors Geoff Raymond and Verta Taylor, distinguished professor emeritus Richard Falk, Kevin Robinson and Marielle Mayorga-Robinson. The content of this article is my sole responsibility and acknowledgment of these individuals does not suggest in any way that they agree with the content herein or share my views
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Here we go again: Israel plans ground invasion of Gaza

Postby 8bitagent » Tue Aug 19, 2014 5:20 am

I would have given my life to fight alongside the Jews and Poles fighting the psychopathic Nazis, but this...this is too much.
Ban me, call me an anti-semite but I cant with a clear conscience support Israel in any way shape or form anymore. And I hate all the "zionist this, zionist that"
rense stuff. But man, Israel is just out of hand

Israel jailing conscientious objectors
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/18/world/mea ... ?hpt=hp_c2

sicking anti black racism and violence
http://www.thenation.com/video/176762/i ... -holy-land

hardcore racial purity programs
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-so ... ot-demand/

Yes, tell me how "anti Semitism" is on the rise

NEVER FORGET
Image

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
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Re: Here we go again: Israel plans ground invasion of Gaza

Postby Searcher08 » Tue Aug 19, 2014 8:58 am

I have lots of Jewish friends and am now making a concerted effort to keep the Middle East out of the conversation arena in real and social media life.

The experience of seeing people who are very bright, compassionate and decent folks turn into "Hasbara Routers", where re-broadcast is the *only* game in town and all trace of checking out sources and information accuracy vanishes (e.g. Stand With Us being seen as reliable as The New York Times) - and I do not mean doing hardball R.I. deep politics research - I mean a 5 seconds search on Google / Snopes... yet this does not matter to them - their responses seemed like really deep unconscious avoidance / denial. I tried using some of the Finklestein video approaches that Cuda posted, but it was like my side of the conversation had vanished.

My Facebook feed looks like the ADL news page. I have friends who are at a screaming pitch of barely-controlled terror about anti-Semitism - and the definition of *WHAT* anti-Semitism is seems to have expanded and conflated every which way over the last couple of months. One friend of a friend was (politely) criticised in public for what Israel was doing and this was framed as evidence... that a new Auschwitz was a hair's breadth away. Some braindead NF type shouting abuse from a passing car goes up to a Spinal Tap 11, 2000 people killed in Gaza registers at 0.1 on a ten scale. That is being charitable :(

The bottom line is their desire to get rid of these fear and terror feelings over-rides all considerations of The Other - and if that means ultimately killing every Palestinian, they were all for it. There is no, zero, nada sense that there is ANY aspect of the situation that is not the Arabs fault. If Israel neutron-bombs Gaza, they will be furious with the Arabs for *making* them do it.

The irony is that if I was to sit down and design an approach that would ultimately be really dangerous for the Israelis and for Jewish people, I could not create anything worse than this. Hamas is being transformed into a Sunni version of Hezbollah, who were inflicting high casualties on the IDF. What next? Creation of Castle Gaza with a 100ft alligator filled moat around it?
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Re: Here we go again: Israel plans ground invasion of Gaza

Postby The Consul » Tue Aug 19, 2014 5:57 pm

If my sons are playing soccer on the beach and you kill them, I will not feel better if you tell me you did not mean to, even though there is actually scant evidence it was an accident. If someone comes to your home and takes your daughter hostage...and the police blow her away in order to kill the criminal, do not such police surrender part of their whole reason for existence? If Americans are afraid to criticize the actions of another country because of reprisals within America, should not that be considered a threat to the 1st Amendment? And how do we consider a country that is basically a religious/ethnic government that excludes at least 20% of population within its borders from voting a democracy? If you include all of the displaced and refugee Palestinians, it would be greater in numbers than all of the Jews. It is a hard argument to win to say why Israel will not eventually go the way of South Africa.
" Morals is the butter for those who have no bread."
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Re: Here we go again: Israel plans ground invasion of Gaza

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 03, 2014 8:02 am

Israeli DM: Gaza War Cost Over $9 Billion
Gaza Poll: Hamas More Popular After War
by Jason Ditz, September 02, 2014
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There has been wide speculation about the overall cost of Israel’s nearly two-month long war on the Gaza Strip. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon stepped in today to say the direct military cost of the war was $9 billion.

Ya’alon insisted the war would’ve been worth it at three times the price, citing the huge damage done to Hamas. A new poll today showed Hamas is actually more popular in the strip after the war.

$9 billion is a huge chunk of Israel’s annual $14 billion military budget, and over two years worth of US military subsidies. That’s only the direct military costs, a fraction of the overall cost to the Israeli economy, as the war hugely hurt the nation’s important tourism industry.

The Israeli government has struggled to sell the war as a great military victory, but apart from a large civilian death toll there was very little measurable consequence to the war at all, and with Israel already facing a budget crunch over military spending, it wasn’t a great time to dump money on a pointless war.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Here we go again: Israel plans ground invasion of Gaza

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Sep 06, 2014 9:52 am

Exclusive: Israel's Video Justifying Destruction of a Hospital Was From 2009
Saturday, 06 September 2014 09:29
By Gareth Porter, Truthout | Report

Image
The video clip showing apparent firing from an annex to the hospital was actually shot during Israel's 2008-09 "Operation Cast Lead," and the audio clip accompanying it was from an incident unrelated to Al Wafa. (Screengrab: The Times of Israel)
A video distributed by the Israeli military in July suggesting that Palestinian fighters had fired from the Al Wafa Rehabilitation and Geriatric Hospital in Gaza City was not shot during the recent Israeli attack on Gaza, and both audio and video clips were manipulated to cover up the fact that they were from entirely different incidents, a Truthout investigation has revealed.
The video, released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on July 23, the same day Israeli airstrikes destroyed Al Wafa, was widely reported by pro-Israeli publications and websites as proving that the hospital was destroyed because Hamas had turned the hospital into a military facility. But the video clip showing apparent firing from an annex to the hospital was actually shot during Israel's 2008-09 "Operation Cast Lead," and the audio clip accompanying it was from an incident unrelated to Al Wafa.
The misleading video was only the last in a series of IDF dissimulations about Al Wafa hospital that included false claims that Hamas rockets had been launched from the hospital grounds, or very near it, and that the hospital had been damaged by an attack on the launching site.
The IDF began to prepare the ground for the destruction of Al Wafa hospital well before Israeli ground troops entered Gaza on July 17. On July 11, the IDF fired four warning rockets on the fourth floor of Al Wafa, making a large hole in the ceiling - the standard IDF signal that a building was going to be destroyed by an airstrike.
On July 17, the hospital was hit by a total of 15 rockets, according to Dr. Basman Alashi, Al Wafa's director. After the first few rockets, a phone call from the IDF "asked how much time do you need to evacuate?" he told Truthout. After the second and third floors were largely destroyed, the patients' rooms were filled with smoke and the hospital lost electricity, he gave the order to evacuate the hospital.
An IDF spokesman told Allison Deger of Mondoweiss that Hamas rocket launches had come "from exactly near the hospital, 100 meters near." A slide show released by the IDF August 19 includes an aerial view of Al Wafa Hospital with two alleged rocket launching sites marked that are clearly much farther from the hospital than the 100 meters.
Even if that IDF claim of 100 meters were accurate, however, it was more than sufficient to allow the IDF to hit the launch site with precision-guided munitions without damaging the hospital. Israeli air to ground missiles, especially those fired from drones, are known to be able to hit small targets without causing collateral damage to nearby buildings. An IDF video posted on August 9, for example, shows a missile destroying what is said to be a hidden rocket launch site without harming a mosque only a few meters away from the explosion.
IDF spokesman Captain Eytan Buchman nevertheless blandly suggested that it was collateral damage from striking the launch site. He said the IDF was "left with no choice" but to "target the launcher with the most precise munitions capable of ensuring its destruction."
On July 21, the IDF Spokesman's Office pushed its propaganda line linking Al Wafa and rocket launching sites even further, claiming in a tweet and on its blog, "Hamas fires rockets from Wafa hospital in the Gaza neighborhood of Shujaiya." Under that headline was an aerial photo enhanced to highlight what was said to be Al Wafa Hospital, along with a red dot representing an M-75 rocket launch site that was not on the hospital grounds, but appeared to be a few meters away.
But the building shown in the aerial photo was not Al Wafa hospital, as Dr. Alashi quickly pointed out. A Google map of Al Wafa hospital shows none of the buildings resemble the one the IDF identified as Al Wafa. The building in the IDF image belongs to the Right to Life Society.
After that prevarication had been revealed, the IDF added a new claim that "the hospital grounds" had been used by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad as "a post enabling terrorists to open fire at soldiers."
The IDF said that Hamas had "fired at Israel and at IDF forces from the hospital" despite warnings from the IDF, and the IDF had been forced to attack targets on the hospital site.
The statement was accompanied by a video purporting to document the firing at Israeli troops. Based on the camera angle and altitude, the video was taken by an Israeli drone, according to a former US intelligence officer, with experience in interpreting military-related images, who analyzed the video for Truthout.
The first segment of the video is a grainy, black-and-white aerial shot of a building that starts with the legend, "Terrorists Threaten IDF from inside Wafa Hospital." The building shown is not Al Wafa hospital, however, but an annex to the hospital that had been empty, both Dr. Alashi and Charlie Andeasson, a Swedish activist who was in the hospital when it was attacked on July 16, told Truthout.
The eight-second video shows what could be two brief bursts of fire from one of the windows on the third floor and then a third flash in a fourth story window. The former US intelligence officer confirmed that the footage of the building was selected from two different times of day. After the first three seconds of the video, the camera angle and the amount of light both change perceptibly. Nevertheless an exchange between the two voices on the audiotape accompanying the video continues as though the scene were continuous during the entire eight seconds.
The first voice heard on the audio recording says, in Hebrew, "Do you see this firing? Have spotted fires from within the house." The English subtitles accompanying the audio add "hospital" in parentheses after the word "house," but Seattle-based blogger on Israeli affairs Richard Silverstein, who speaks Hebrew, confirmed to Truthout after listening to the audio clip that the speaker uses the word "bayit," which can only mean "house."
A second voice then says, according to the subtitles, "Positive, fire from within the house." But the speaker actually uses the term "small house" ("bayit ha katan hazeh"), according to Silverstein.
Those references to firing from a small house indicate that the audio clip was taken from an entirely different incident at another location. That device was obviously used because there was no audio of an incident involving firing from the hospital.
Dr. Alashi said he believes the eight-second video clip portrays firing from the annex that occurred in the 2008-09 Israeli attack on Gaza. "People confirmed to me that there was firing from the building then," he told Truthout. That building was, in fact, attacked on January 16, 2009, by Israeli tanks only 70 meters away from the hospital, damaging the third and fourth floors of the building - the very floors from which the flashes are shown in the video - as the UN Fact-Finding Mission noted in its September 2009 report.
The last segment of the video showing the bombing of the Al Wafa hospital, bears the legend "secondary explosion" - meaning explosions of weapons - as each building is shown being destroyed, in line with the Israeli argument throughout the operation that Hamas stored rockets and other weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques.
The video fist shows the hospital itself being blown up, followed by heavy billowing smoke covering the entire hospital and then another flash of fire. But the former intelligence official who viewed the video said that flash indicated another Israeli missile strike on the target rather than a secondary explosion.
The clip then cuts to the destruction of the annex, again with the "secondary explosion" legend. The billowing smoke from the initial bomb explosion covers the building, and then two or three small puffs of darker smoke appear. Those puffs of smoke would suggest a secondary explosion, according to the former US intelligence officer. But he also observed that a hospital would have flammable materials other than hidden weapons that could cause the darker smoke to appear.
Given the existence of Hamas' complex network of tunnels, which provided plenty of storage space for its rockets and other weaponry, it would have made no sense for Hamas to store rockets in a hospital that it knew had already been targeted by the IDF.
In its final seconds, the video focuses in to show a square which the legend describes as a “tunnel opening near Al Wafa.” But Dr. Alashi told Truthout that it is actually a water well.
The IDF real reason for the destruction of Al Wafa hospital appears to be related to the determination to raise the cost to the civilian population of Gaza for Palestinian resistance, in line with the approach represented by its "Dahiya doctrine," named after the Beirut suburb dominated by Hezbollah, much of which the Israeli Air Force reduced to rubble in the 2006 war.
That strategy, recognized as a violation of the international laws of war, was pursued most obviously in the complete destruction of every house in several square blocks in three separate areas of the Shujaiya district of Gaza City July 19-20. But it was also evident in IDF attacks on Al Wafa and in the series of mortar and artillery attacks on six different UN shelters from July 21 though August 3. Those attacks killed a total of 47 civilians and wounded 341, according to a survey of the incidents by The Guardian.
In none of the six cases where UN shelters were hit by IDF mortar shells was the military able to offer a plausible explanation, and in three cases, it offered no explanation whatever.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Here we go again: Israel plans ground invasion of Gaza

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Re: Here we go again: Israel plans ground invasion of Gaza

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Re: Here we go again: Israel plans ground invasion of Gaza

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