This transcript of an Israeli General on an Israeli radio station (begins 6.52 in) defending the latest killing by Israeli army snipers of a 14 year old boy who posed no threat of any kind, is much more powerful if you just read it than any analysis I can give.
Brigadier-General (Res.) Zvika Fogel interviewed on the Yoman Hashevua program of Israel’s Kan radio, 21 April 2018.
Ron Nesiel: Greetings Brigadier General (Res.) Zvika Fogel. Should the IDF [Israeli army] rethink its use of snipers? There’s the impression that maybe someone lowered the bar for using live fire, and this may be the result?
Zvika Fogel: Ron, let’s maybe look at this matter on three levels. At the tactical level that we all love dealing with, the local one, also at the level of values, and with your permission, we will also rise up to the strategic level. At the tactical level, any person who gets close to the fence, anyone who could be a future threat to the border of the State of Israel and its residents, should bear a price for that violation. If this child or anyone else gets close to the fence in order to hide an explosive device or check if there are any dead zones there or to cut the fence so someone could infiltrate the territory of the State of Israel to kill us …
Nesiel: Then, then his punishment is death?
Fogel: His punishment is death. As far as I’m concerned then yes, if you can only shoot him to stop him, in the leg or arm – great. But if it’s more than that then, yes, you want to check with me whose blood is thicker, ours or theirs. It is clear to you that if one such person will manage to cross the fence or hide an explosive device there …
Nesiel: But we were taught that live fire is only used when the soldiers face immediate danger.
Fogel: Come, let’s move over to the level of values. Assuming that we understood the tactical level, as we cannot tolerate a crossing of our border or a violation of our border, let’s proceed to the level of values. I am not Ahmad Tibi, I am Zvika Fogel. I know how these orders are given. I know how a sniper does the shooting. I know how many authorizations he needs before he receives an authorization to open fire. It is not the whim of one or the other sniper who identifies the small body of a child now and decides he’ll shoot. Someone marks the target for him very well and tells him exactly why one has to shoot and what the threat is from that individual. And to my great sorrow, sometimes when you shoot at a small body and you intended to hit his arm or shoulder it goes even higher. The picture is not a pretty picture. But if that’s the price that we have to pay to preserve the safety and quality of life of the residents of the State of Israel, then that’s the price. But now, with your permission, let us go up one level and look at the overview. It is clear to you that Hamas is fighting for consciousness at the moment. It is clear to you and to me …
Nesiel: Is it hard for them to do? Aren’t we providing them with sufficient ammunition in this battle?
Fogel: We’re providing them but …
Nesiel: Because it does not do all that well for us, those pictures that are distributed around the world.
Fogel: Look, Ron, we’re even terrible at it. There’s nothing to be done, David always looks better against Goliath. And in this case, we are the Goliath. Not the David. That is entirely clear to me. But let’s look at it at the strategic level: you and I and a large part of the listeners are clear that this will not end up in demonstrations. It is clear to us that Hamas can’t continue to tolerate the fact that its rockets are not managing to hurt us, its tunnels are eroding …
Nesiel: Yes.
Fogel: And it doesn’t have too many suicide bombers who continue to believe the fairytale about the virgins waiting up there. It will drag us into a war. I do not want to be on the side that gets dragged. I want to be on the side that initiates things. I do not want to wait for the moment where it finds a weak spot and attacks me there. If tomorrow morning it gets into a military base or a kibbutz and kills people there and takes prisoners of war or hostages, call it as you like, we’re in a whole new script. I want the leaders of Hamas to wake up tomorrow morning and for the last time in their life see the smiling faces of the IDF. That’s what I want to have happen. But we are dragged along. So we’re putting snipers up because we want to preserve the values we were educated by. We can’t always take a single picture and put it before the whole world. We have soldiers there, our children, who were sent out and receive very accurate instructions about whom to shoot to protect us. Let’s back them up.
Nesiel: Brigadier-General (Res.) Zvika Fogel, formerly Head of the Southern Command Staff, thank you for your words.
Fogel: May you only hear good news. Thank you.
There is no room to doubt the evil nature of the expansionist apartheid state that Israel has now become. Nor the moral vacuity of its apologists in the western media.
————————————————————————
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The IDF, by its own, infantile, saying “the most moral army in the world”.
It was a typo error! They omitted the ‘im’ before the ‘moral’.
Not the most moral but definitely the most surrounded and strategically disadvantaged army in the world.
Unless one counts the only 15 km wide “waist” of central Israel as a plus since most artillery will fire over it.
Good to see you Pipe up abou this. I supect Many of Your Followers with a Concience too
Is All of Humanity Too weak to save our selves from Banks… The Military Indusdrial Complex
” At the tactical level, any person who gets close to the fence, anyone who could be a future threat to the border of the State of Israel and its residents, should bear a price for that violation.”
This statement alone is genuinely jaw dropping, what “violation” is this Palestinian guilty of? being too close to a fence, not crossing it, not even touching it, just being a bit, in the subjective eyes of an IDF sniper, too close to it. And for the violation of being a bit too close to a fence he was shot dead. As a retrospective excuse for killing an unarmed civilian doing nothing wrong they don’t come much more……cold blooded than that.
But note how he goes out of his way to assert that here is a decision taken not by the sniper, but higher up in the chain of command.
And?
Quite the travesty is it not that in Israel, of all places, the sniper did not feel safe to turn the rifle on the insane psychopath barking illegal, blasphemous orders and arrest him as a traitor.
Can you give one example of a Christian soldier doing that in the any of the occupations that Christian countries have conducted over the centuries?
No. Didn’t think so.
I’m not pro-Israel of even sympathetic to their situation, but we have a responsibility to judge them by the same standards that we judge everyone else by, without reference to their religion.
For the Hatuey above and below
The Dreyfus affair is not dissimilar in so far as triggering anti semitism is concerned
Religion is relevant in so far as rights to occupy holy land are concerned
Anti-semitism goes back way further than the Dreyfus affair, as you well know.
My thoughts on this are simply that we should not need to discuss religion or hold Israel to a higher or different standard to that which we hold anyone else.
That isn’t to let them off the hook. What they do is reprehensible and a huge source of strife, misery, and instability. But by any measure it’s of a relatively small scale compared to other stuff that goes on and, importantly, I don’t think Israel would behave like this without US military and political support.
For all those reasons and more, the case of Israel is of secondary importance.
You mean like the thousands of Sunni suicide bombers / fighters in Syria, Irak, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Europe? They were promised endless virgins after death, a morally pretty low deal. Both extreme religious groups are quite egoistic. Now biggest difference: there are only ~ 15 million Jews on this planet and ~ 1.3 billion Sunnis. In occupying sq. kms the proportions are in the same league.
I condemn barbarity / cruelty from any side, but can find much more of it in Syria or Yemen today, so would focus there.
Why not have an option for one off payments?
Agrree fwl
Confused, you’re both regular contributors and I assume enjoy the discussion and CM’s journalism. This work has been free for years. Time to step up surely? 2 quid a month is less than the price of a coffee? You can always stop if you want.
Not a big fan of subs and prefer to pick and mix my sources. Decline of print media for eg means you can no longer actually buy a copy of the WSJ in Europe you have to subscribe and read online. Therefore only bankers read it i.e. subs tend to channel people into reading what they subscribe for and reduce tendency to read outside of their personal Overton window.
Besides which, it has bugall to do with Twostime or anyone else how much or how often someone may choose to pay.
Why on earth would a blogger NOT provide as many options for readers as possible? It is astounding how a simple suggestion by some readers brings out a sort of mob slaveringly school-prefect mentality in other readers.
Well; where values need preserving, who doesn’t send for the snipers, eh? 🙂
“There is no room to doubt the evil nature of the expansionist apartheid state that Israel has now become. Nor the moral vacuity of its apologists in the western media.”
I never doubted Israel’s expansionist policy and thankfully I am not an apologist. God willing my legs will be getting into gear again in August cycling on behalf of Palestinian children. This year it starts, handy for me, in Birmingham from where I shall cycle to the official start in Coventry. It finishes in London. Stages are shorter this year to potentially attract more people. So if you care to join us it is Friday 3 Aug to Sunday 5 Aug:
https://www.thebigride4palestine.com/dates-and-prices.php
Hi John can you put up your sponsorship page again please?
I will do soon Aidworker. I’ve not created it yet. But I will.
A very one sided piece of propaganda unworthy of this blog. It would be very simple to get a similar inhuman piece from the Palistinian manipulators who deliberately send 14 year old children to their death to feed propaganda like this.
Blame the victim and reward the executioner.
I doubt it,but if it were,I am sure it would already have done. Or could you give us a sample please George ?
Israel Über Alles, eh?
A very one sided piece of propaganda ….
You pretty much stated your mission objectives in this opening sentence, that is followed by this effort: “… manipulators who deliberately send 14 year old children to their death ….” thus portraying perambulating inside grounds of this latter day Warsaw ghetto AKA Gaza in proximity or near enough to a fence as a mission to a certain death, and not the fact that a bunch of outside occupiers/settlers come savage murderers whom kill innocent children for just for kicks, and then go on the radio to talk about it and boast the orders to shoot came on from high up and it was not the work of a drunken “bulldozer driver” as in the case of Rachel Corrie .
You must have a very low opinion of anyone outside your limited parameters of understanding to come up with such an insultingly simplistic retort with a view to patronise and garner the support of the rest of us from without.
I agree with Shaw. The military of the State of Israel has the right and duty to shoot Palestinian children in the head. Only anti-semitism could lead one to conclude otherwise.
Shaw: “It would be very simple to get a similar inhuman piece from the Palistinian manipulators who deliberately send 14 year old children to their death to feed propaganda like this.”
So you are basing your argument on the premise that these children are being used as nothing other than propaganda point-scorers.
Hmm, you do realise that doing so takes the legs out from under the argument of Brigadier-General (Res.) Zvika Fogel because children being used in that way can not be regarded as getting “close to the fence in order to hide an explosive device or check if there are any dead zones there or to cut the fence so someone could infiltrate the territory of the State of Israel to kill us”.
Hamas: Child, go walk over there.
Child: Why?
Hamas: Go there and an Israeli soldier will explain it to you.
Child: Oh, OK
Sniper: [BANG!] He was going to break through the fence!
Sniper: [BANG!] He was checking for dead spots!
Sniper: [BANG!] He was planting an explosive device!
Sniper: [BANG!] He was going to cut the fence!
Hamas: That’s enough, dude, you’ve proved our point.
You don’t get it, do you?
Here, let me spell it out: if Hamas are sending those boys out to be shot by the IDF then that doesn’t rise to the level of Fogel’s shoot-to-kill logic, and therefore those boys shouldn’t be shot. But shot they are, which means that Fogel is spouting lies and nonsense.
As are you.
In what sense is it propaganda? It is a verbatim report of an interview with an Israeli general on an Israeli radio station. I would say it is simply a case of being hoist by one’s own petard.
It is a classic tactic of anti-semites to call attention to the statements made by Israeli State officials about shooting Palestinian children. By suggesting that these future threats against Israel should not be shot, you are implicitly denying Israel’s right to exist.
Pre-emptive killing of anyone they chose to identify as a threat is murder .
One sided, alas. The Western focus on children started in 2008-9 during “Cast Lead” in the Guardian & co when they were in an anti Israel mode. They consistently remain mute when children are killed or used in the rest of the ME or Pakistan. There is ample proof of young boys being brainwashed for suicide missions in these areas – and NOT by Israel.
This doesn’t mean that anything the IDF does is above criticism. They did bad stuff, but usually in frantic self defense and always less than in other areas around. So after writing extensively about that, go ahead and tackle the IDF.
“There is ample proof of young boys being brainwashed for suicide missions in these areas – and NOT by Israel.”
Funnily enough, nobody can quote an actual example, except in Israeli propaganda.
Ever heard of ISIS, Taliban or madrassas? Or do you think you boys in Pakistan, Irak or Syria got the endless virgins lure all in parallel by themselves or by chance?
You’ve got a good imagination there, inventing things all over the place, whether they’re relevant or not. Child suicide bombers are extremely rare. You can’t come up with a genuine example of what you claim.
Google: child suicide bomber >> About 80,40,000 results From Nigeria to Pakistan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_suicide_bombers_in_the_Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict
Your reference to Wikipedia. From the talk page of same article:
“But this article was written in its totality in a zionist propaganda tone to emphasize the zionist myth the Palestinians send their kids to death (and hense no problem the the Israeli ocuupation army killed around 4000 kids in Palestine).”
Wikipedia is not what it is set out to be and can be a propaganda tool too. If you want to know what is going on, always read the talk page also.
Yes,it is one side talking about killing children,
Mads Gilbert the Norwegian surgeon who worked in Gaza hospitals during Israels last offensive there, said that he thought that the reason that there was such a high proportion of children killed when Israeli drone technology is capable of telling the colour of a man’s eyes was that they were deliberately targeted. He suggested that the idea was to break the will of the Palestinians.
Does anyone know if deliberately killing targeting the children of your enemy is a known military tactic ?
Obviously we all know that the ultimate threat to to your enemy is “We know where your children go to school ” as we have seen on many tv shows,
In Syria ISIS, El Qaeda etc. don’t only send young Muslim boys to their graves but also all boys of other religions. Non Muslims girls become sex-slaves.
For adults much the same treatment: 39 Indians missing in Iraq killed by Daesh http://www.arabnews.com/node/1270286/world Foreign Muslims were spared.
Gaza is Heaven compared to that.
Antony, i assume that you are saying that it is perfectly reasonable for Israelis to deliberately kill and maim Palestinian children,and that therefore you find nothing wrong with the general’s comments.
No, I didn’t say that. I do noticed that this whole episode was triggered by Palestinian protests close to the border (fence): action -> reaction. The IDF dumbly replied as hoped.
Employing boys for digging tunnels in Syria and Gaza is not photographed so “doesn’t exist” according to most Western MSM – few are on the right spot or speak Arab . Better sit safe in an English speaking 5 star hotel in Israel but vilify the place.
Anthony
“Gaza is Heaven compared to that.”
You must be some sort of sado-masochist to make such a comment. If Gaza is Heaven wat do you think if the forcibly expropriated settlements across the protective apartheid wall?
“There is ample proof of young boys being brainwashed for suicide missions in these areas – and NOT by Israel.”
Yet these are not examples of “suicide missions”, unless you accept these as instances of “suicide by IDF”.
A child approaches the fence. He is shot dead by an IDF sniper.
Q: Why?
A: Because he approaches a fence.
Remind me again how approaching a fence is a “suicide mission”?
“They did bad stuff, but usually in frantic self defense and always less than in other areas around.”
And how is it in any way “frantic” or “self defence” to shoot a child who is approaching a fence?
Yet it is indisputable that any Palestinian child who approaches this fence is “usually” shot dead by the IDF.
No, please, explain it to me again….
I think Israel should shoot all the children in the Middle East, just to be sure.
Yes, you hardly ever hear anything on the Guardian about the children killed by Assad’s chemical attacks, for example. I’ve never even seen one picture of an allegedly gassed baby. But there *must* be pictures out there somewhere!
On the other hand, Israel innocently shoots a few Palestinian adolescents in the head–they are aiming for their arms!–and the propaganda from the BBC, Guardian, and NY Times is non-stop. Everyday the cover stories on all these papers feature long, sympathetic, emotionally manipulative stories about the plight of Palestinian adolescents, and they regularly cast Israeli snipers in the role of murderous sociopaths. The double-standard is ridiculous. Only way you can’t see it is if you’re anti-semitic.
WJ – Superb commentary. 🙂 You definitely have a second career in H*sbara if the current one doesn’t pan out.
‘Frantic self-defence’?! Pull the other one. I suppose you think the Nakba in which three quarters of a million Palestinians were driven from their homes and land in 1948 was self-defensive as well, rather than the act of a settler colonial state that needed to ensure a Jewish majority through the revoltingly named method of ‘ethnic cleansing’. No wonder the 14 year old descendants of these dispossessed people forced to live in the prison camp of Gaza don’t need any indoctrination in order to pick up a stone, any more than than did the kids of Soweto in 1976.
George, this isn’t propaganda for God’ sake, it is the transcript of a radio interview by a general in the Israeli Defence Force. It is a public outlet. Anyone with an ounce of humanity should rightly be appalled by it. This is murder in cold blood and the world stands by and does nothing. No military action, no sanctions, nothing.
When you hear the daily BBC propaganda about Syria and the total lack of discussion about the killings in Gaza and Yemen you know how hypocrisy works and how the BBC is suffering from moral decline.
The signal difference is that the “killings” by Assad in Syria are often invented, staged and directed by the British government using its pet proxy White Helmets and its tame media. The atrocities and deaths in Yemen and Gaza at the hands of the Saudis and Israelis, with the tacit approval of the U.K. and the U.S. and using British weapons and American money, are all too real.
An excellent choice of title for that blog. Googling “by their own words” brings Craig’s illuminating transcript up as the top item. Unsurprisingly, “hostile environment” is territory wholly occupied by the Maybot. Give her credit for making sure that “the nasty party” is inscribed on her heart (cf “Calais” and Mary Queen of Scots). For the sake of absolute clarity, I do not wish her dead, just out of office.
On support for the website: I have done so but found it frustratingly impossible to do so other than through using PayPal. From years ago I have a PayPal account and because of that was unable to use the option of simply using a debit card directly.
Mary Tudor, Iain, not Mary Queen of Scots.
Thanks for the correction. Stupid me!
“Hostile environment” coined by Alan Johnston.
He’s saying that the sniper who shot a child dead was “only following orders”.
Just as 99% of soldiers followed orders in places like Fallujah, Vietnam, British India, Korea, and in a thousand other contexts where Europeans have stuck their noses in. In those places we discuss the issue top-down but here for some reason we are prone to discuss the motivations of soldiers on the ground and wider religious ideas, not to mention grand conspiracy theories.
Big defence at Nurenberg wasn’t it?
‘Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teenager famed for slapping an Israeli soldier on camera, should have been shot, at least in the knee, Deputy Knesset Speaker Bezalel Smotrich (Habayit Hayehudi) wrote on Twitter Saturday.
“In my opinion, she should have gotten a bullet, at least in the kneecap,” he wrote. “That would have put her under house arrest for the rest of her life.” ‘
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israeli-lawmaker-ahed-tamimi-should-have-gotten-a-bullet-1.6015411
A reminder. Ahed is 16. She was kept in confinement, a child on her own and without legal representation in a military Court and is now in jail, as are hundreds of other Palestinian children.
And find a picture of her cousin, half of whose head was blown away by a rubber coated bullet and yyou might find the reason why she slapped a thuggish member of the IDF. The IDF s rightfully the IOF, Israeli Occupation Force.
‘Ahed’s cousin, 15-year-old Mohammed, was shot in the head on 15 December by a rubber-coated steel pellet of the type used by Israel’s military, and is now back home after surgery. Ahed’s family said word of his grave injury helped set her off against the soldiers that day.
Part of Mohammed’s left skull had to be removed by surgeons, with the bone to be replaced in coming months. Late last week, the teen – who as a 14-year-old spent three months in Israeli detention, accused of stone-throwing – spoke slowly and clearly, but appeared tired, resting his maimed head on the arm rest of a sofa in his family’s living room.
In the neighbouring village of Deir Nidham, the Tamimi clan mourned 17-year-old Musab Tamimi, who was killed by Israeli army fire in clashes with stone-throwers last week. The military said the teen carried a weapon, but provided no evidence. His family denies he was armed. In clashes after Musab’s funeral, 17-year-old Mohammed Barghouti was critically wounded by a shot to the forehead, according to hospital officials.
The Israeli military declined further comment on the incidents.’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/ahed-tamimi-latest-palestinian-girl-14-years-prison-kicking-spitting-israeli-soldiers-protest-family-a8149411.html
It is terrible injustice.
Sharp Ears
Thank you Sharp Ears this has left me tearful.
Antony & Hatuey – your comments on this please.
Just been listening to Tim Whewell telling us the Russians are very very bad because they attacked Islamic State and took women and children captive. Hovis -born and Hovis bread I instantly succumbed to the platitudes of lies and slightly wobbly voice. By Gum you’re right Tim. How deluded I have bib for so long. It’s time we took on the Russians once and for all for stopping the ethnic cleansing of Syria for the future Greater Israel. Warms your heart cockles to hear a Northern man talking shite.
I also listened to Peston yesterday interviewing Brokenshite about his memories of Windrush and Owen Smith about who did Windrush. BS said more or less he remembered lots of discussions when he was Minister for Removing Immigrants, some of them about Windrush and some of them about something else.
Owen Smith said it was mostly Ed Miiband’s fault. There you are darlings, your host got there before you. I wish I had some money to give you Craig. You must be on the same blacklist as me, albeit somewhere quite a lot higher up the list.
On the positive side, he does seem to at least tacitly acknowledge that the State of Israel has a “border.”
It’s a start.
Israel is not a state. It has NO borders and know no law. It is an illegal occupier of another people’s land.
thank you Sharp ears…
Kill the Children, Admision.of Evil
Not strictly true.
Israel has peace treaties with both Egypt and Jordan, and in both those treaties the borders between Israel/Egypt and Israel/Jordan were defined.
Probably sent forward to cut the fence by Hamas, knowing that if he was killed or injured it would score some valuable propaganda with the international community.
The dehumanisation of Palestinians by the occupying regime of settlers has been one of thier main methods of propaganda. The fact that this is institutionalised racism seems to have escaped notice, or deliberately ignored by supporters of this regime.
What you omit Anton is that he was running away.
It is very peculiar that many comments, with correct information from the links provided, are deleted yet that extremely nasty slur on a Palestinian child @ April 23, 2018 at 21:42 remains. What is going on here Craig? It is not worth the effort and time taken to make contributions.
Non1, that “comment” of “yours” is the product of a sick mind – paid or otherwise.
Why? Do you deny that Hamas uses human shields – women and children – in the hope that their deaths will garner sympathy for the Palestinian cause in the West?
To be effective, propaganda has to be widely publicised as truth. Bearing in mind that the lad who was shot by the IDF (on his own side of the fence) will probably not be mentioned by mainstream media, would you agree that this tactic used by Hamas isn’t very good?
thanks craig.. i listened to a fascinating interview on cbc with michael enright and david grossman – an israeli author.. there were so many good things that he said in this interview, that i encourage others to give it a listen.. of course the situation in israel at present is very bad, and it won’t change until others think of adopting a very different approach here.. grossman basically states that israel is much less of a place due the occupation that has been happening for over 50 years.. i encourage others to listen to the interview..
israel is a fortress, but not yet a home…
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-april-22-2018-1.4625277/david-grossman-israel-is-a-fortress-but-not-yet-a-home-1.4628117
Utterly repellent and debased.
Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the Israeli Knesset from the right-wing Tkuma party, which is part of the country’s ruling coalition, appeared to signal.
In a tweet on Sunday, he lamented that Ahed Tamimi was not injured or sentenced to a longer term. The tweet was a comment to a video showing the girl and other people confronting Israeli soldiers a few years ago.
“I am actually sad that she is in jail. She should have gotten a bullet, at least in her kneecap. I would have put her under house arrest for life,” he wrote in Hebrew. https://www.rt.com/news/424859-israeli-mp-shoot-tamimi/ Say’s it all really,
This video is age restricted. You have to press ‘confirm’ to view it. It is very grim.
Published on 22nd April, 2018, it catalogues a terrible litany of injury and death inflicted on the Palestinians on their Great Return March. It resembles a shooting gallery.
https://youtu.be/NpSjr1dT6uY
If you don’t have a Google/YouTube account you can’t sign in and hence can’t watch the video on YouTube. However, I discovered a way around that:
(1) Go to this website: https://pickvideo.net/youtube-video-downloader
(2) Once there paste this link into the box that says “Enter the video link”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpSjr1dT6uY&feature=youtu.be
(3) Now click the download button – extreme right-hand end of the video link box.
(4) Then from the options that turn up just select what video quality you want and the video should download to your computer.
Doing the above worked for me, bypassing the login for YouTube.
i have been Keeping an eye on that Sharp Ears…. But two times i got caught… I’m Like – what is that – A girl – an infant .It’s Yemen…I had this conversation with Ben over at Squonk….
I should say sorry to Ben .. Cos he was the First to ask… The fotos where from Yemen
Spot the difference……
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKSuTtqEjIw&has_verified=1
I want to contribute £5 a month, but don’t want to set up a Pay Pal account. Can you make it so I can pay with my debit card?
Blimey
Spoken like a true Chosenite
It is perfectly reasonable if one starts with the premise that one is right and everyone else is wrong, that one’s life is more important than one hundred lives of others, that defending the land that one has seized by force is one’s paramount duty and no action however despicable can be discounted or condemned in fulfilling that duty.
Yes well you do have to get your genocide in first – otherwise it can get messy can’t it? How else are you going to preserve your values?
Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is indefensible, of course, but the situation as a whole makes no sense in isolation of the fact that they are emboldened by the US policymakers and taxpayers who fund it. Israel has been the top recipient of US Aid for decades. If that aid stopped, the atrocities would soon stop and peace would be right around the corner.
It genuinely puzzles me that so many are eager to discuss the Israeli situation in the context of religion though. There are plenty of non-Jewish states who commit atrocities on a far larger scale, routinely too, and they aren’t Jewish. That includes killing kids. Most of you are probably living in one of them.
Of course, in ethnic and/or religious terms, over the last 250 years the most consistent and serious violators of international and humanitarian law (as defined today) tend to be white and Christian.
I’m not saying people who live in glass eyes shouldn’t throw planks. I just think it makes more sense to throw them elsewhere, if you’re going to throw them at all. Israel is a secondary issue.
Why is Israel such a great ally of the USA/UK do they participate in our troubles have they fought side by side with us?why is everyone up in arms at the thought of any criticism,why do they have such a stranglehold on the USA/Europe,I think we can probably guess.
Your questions can be answered very easily without resort to conspiracy theories.
@ 00.12
Israel is not secondary in any way whatsoever.
The crux of the matter is that the treatment of the Palestinians is a measure of their inhumanity.
Israel is secondary when the scale of its atrocities are compared to the scale of those carried out by other countries. I’m happy to look at and compare death tolls, if it helps clarify.
It’s also secondary when you consider the distortions caused by US military aid which has been getting pumped into Israel for about 50 years. Do you think for a second Israel would be so aggressive without that aid?
On the political level, Israel’s secondary status is confirmed even more emphatically. Do you think without US political support they’d behave like this? You might want to take account of the many U.N. resolutions that the US has vetoed on their behalf over the years before answering.
In short, Israel wouldn’t so much as break wind without US approval, support, and arms. If it’s a monster, it’s one that the west created, chiefly the US, and one that depends totally on western support.
It is not purely about deaths and how they happened. It is about the daily attrition of oppression of the IDF and the settlers. Night raids. House demolitions. Children arrested and imprisoned. Check points through which it takes hours to progress. Verbal insults. Threats of physical harm.
This website kept by an elderly couple in NZ. Leslie Bravery and his wife, using data from the Palestine Monitoring Group explains. Details of the incidents are in a smaller font below the headlines. The latest are from 20th April, 2018.
Israeli Army positions open fire on Gaza protesters – 4 killed and 161 wounded
Israeli Army wounds 8-year-old child in West Bank village
Settler fanatics sever the branches of 100 Palestinian olive trees
Night peace disruption and home invasion in West Bank village
7 attacks (5 Israeli ceasefire violations)
2 raids including home invasions
4 dead (including child aged 14)
166 wounded
1 abducted (aged 17)
2 acts of agricultural/economic sabotage
4 taken prisoner
http://palestine.org.nz/phrc/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4858&Itemid=44
Difficult as those experiences must have been for the poor people on the wrong end of them, in total they amount to almost nothing as compared to say the destruction of Libya.
It’s always struck me as odd that so many, particularly on the left, want to give such emphasis to Israel when those very same people are living in countries that are responsible for much bigger and more grotesque crimes, crimes that often result in the destruction of whole countries.
Join the dots. The Korean War wasn’t down to Jews in the whitehouse, neither was the annihilation of indigenous Americans, or Vietnam, or a million other such things that share the same common denominator.
Most of what you say is unfalsifiable conspiracy theory stuff. I’ll let someone else explain what falsifiability is and why it’s important. One thing you were falsifiable on was the ‘clash of civilisations’ which was not concocted by an Israeli at all but by Samuel Huntingdon. I happen to have read it and can tell you it is widely regarded in the political sciences as a pile of ridiculous crap — nobody anywhere is basing policy on that junk, be assured of that.
It should also be remembered that Trump, at the end of last year – axed ALL financial aid to Palestine. That action says everything really.
“he g^nocidal wars of the last 30 years or so seem to me to have been primarily in the interests of the ME e*tity we are currently discussing.”
Absolutely inaccurate. The worst acts of genocide in the last 30 years did not involve Israel. We can easily go through them. I would include East Timor, The plight of the Kurds at the hands of Turkey, and various examples in Africa.
I’m taking a very strict definition of genocide in those examples. If we dilute that and look at say ‘predictable civilian deaths as a result of military aggression’, the list would be dominated by the US and its cohorts in various places around the world from South America to Iraq and beyond.
It’s very easy to get bogged down and obsessed by Israel but what you need to remember is that the Middle East is one of the most resource rich (and therefore strategically important) areas on the planet. It has been for many decades.
Consider that before Israel existed there was intense great power interest and rivalry in the region, no israel to blame then, and consider how that interest and rivalry might be expected to disappear when oil loses its value or runs out. Israel is part of that rivalry and is effectively being used as a sort of aircraft carrier by the US. Nobody is more acutely aware that US support will evaporate at some point than the Israelis themselves.
As for the idea that Jews have disproportionate influence in many countries, I don’t deny it but I don’t think that’s a conspiracy of any sort. There are a few variables, the key one being that those countries want to be on good terms with Israel for political reasons and are open to Israeli overtures (Israel being a key ally of the US).
Another reason is that in the Jewish culture great importance is attached to being educated, successful, and wealthy. Many of them are. But if Irish Catholics were like that we would simply envy and applaud them — why then should we frown on these things when it comes to Jewish people if not because we are anti-Semitic?
On the question of lobbying and lobby groups, you might want to factor in the tendency amongst countries to facilitate lobbying differently. In Britain and its offshoots like the US and Australia, lobbying is considered a quite uncontroversial part of the political system. In some it’s banned and considered a form of corruption.
Consider also that Israel because of its controversial policies and actions would need to spend more on lobbying in order to stave off any possible sanctions, economic and/or political discrimination, etc. What they do to Palestinians is wrong, everyone knows it, and so it stands to reason that they are going to need to spend more and put more effort in to defend themselves, just as any criminal would.
If anyone thinks Brigadier-General Fogel is an exception, I’d start thinking again, for its clear those who are ardent Zionists, extreme racists no less, think nothing of the murder of youths by heavily armed soldiers of the IDF in Gaza. Just go and witness it on the Blog run by David Collier, that’s the person the UK MSM go running too to get the latest faux anti-semitism dirt on Corbyn and the Labour Movement. This man’s Blog, Beyond the Great Divide, harbours a vipers nest of evil, a Blog that masquerades as one that is opposed to racism is inhabited by racists who profess love for a murderous state. Forget any peace in the Middle East or solution to the Israeli-Palestine crisis if this is what people are dealing with, namely no contrition, quite the reverse, it would seem the IDF have not killed enough!
http://david-collier.com/attacking-jews-labour-votes/#comment-20000
During the most violent operations targeting the people of Gaza, two Israeli opinion polls recorded approval rates of over 90%. The main groups attacking Corbyn are not really ‘Jewish support groups in the UK’, more like pro Israeli groups using exaggerated and even fabricated attacks on British Jews to silence a man who has fought tooth and nail, (many times to his own detriment) against all racism and prejudice. Apparently, it’s not enough to generally abhor bigotry, we need to be more specific in the type of bigotry we abhor the most.
This sentence jumped out at me:-
“At the tactical level, any person who gets close to the fence, anyone who could be a future threat to the border of the State of Israel and its residents, should bear a price for that violation.”
Then – I asked myself:-
Who is infringing on whose land?
This seems to confirm what I thought about the murder of Yasser Murtaja, that he was singled out amongst the crowd.
Why? Watch his films. You see through his eyes a courageous people, resourceful, determined, making a desperate bid to be free, seen and heard by the world. You see them raising coloured flags against bullets and missiles but also in laughter and affection. You see love and joy amidst generational suffering. You see beauty and grace. You see human beings under occupation, prisoners in their own lives, in their own land. You see a people whom almost any community would be proud to have as neighbours should they come to know them. That’s why Israel targeted and murdered Yasser Murtaja . Because he showed the lives of a designated non-people to be rich and meaningful. And as valuable as any in Israel or any other country.
He represented a most urgent threat to Israeli state dehumanisation not because he was a journalist, but because he was a good one.
What a revolting piece of human garbage. I am simply appalled by his callousness and complete disregard for human values and life. The behavior of the IDF has grown more and more bloodthirsty in the last decades, not the slightest respect for anything at all, even directly executing wounded people in the street.
They ain’t human
UK is almost the same as the US. Both parties receive substantial support from parties (often Russian oligarchs resident in the UK) supportive of Israel. The politicians are bought and paid for. Both the US and the UK effectively take orders from their colonial masters in Tel Aviv. Includes the MSM.
Perhaps the next Friends of Israel tour will include front row seats like this:
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180409-israelis-watch-outdoor-cinema-on-gaza-border-cheer-as-palestinians-killed/
“….but what is it that inspires the deep devotion of politicians in the uk? Iim just not seeing it I’m afraid.”
If you can’t see it it is because you are not meant to see that when the US says jump, UKG says: how high? If you appreciate this you will see why we went to war with Iraq, bombed Libya, supported Syrian rebels etc…
In fact it is a long time since U.K. foreign policy has been independent of US interests.