Peres Phones Obama ‘Congrats & FYI Op Cast Lead Part 2'
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This is from Alan Hart:
I imagine I am not the only one who feels the need to vomit (dictionary definition - “to throw up the contents of the stomach through the mouth”) when Israel’s Goebbels justifies the Zionist state’s ferocious and monstrously disproportionate attacks by air and sea on the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, the prison camp which is home to 1.5 million besieged and mainly impoverished Palestinians. The Israeli to whom I am referring is, of course, Australian-born Mark Regev, the prime minister’s spokesman, for which read spin doctor. The more I see and hear him in action, the more it seems to me that he makes Nazi Germany’s propaganda chief look like an amateur.
snip
In the immediate aftermath of Israel’s targeted assassination of Hamas’s military commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, Regev was at his best. Via the BBC and many other networks his main message to the Western nations was that Israel is just like them - democratic and civilized. “I would ask them all,” he said, “how would you act?” (respond to rocket fire from “terrorists”). By obvious implication he was saying something very like, “You would take all necessary action against the terrorists to defend and protect your people, and that’s why I am sure you will understand and support what we are doing."
The flaw in that presentation is that Israel is NOT like the Western nations. It is a brutal occupying power, and the cause of the incoming rockets is its occupation and on-going colonization and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and its blockade of the Gaza Strip. That plus the fact that Israel’s leaders have no interest in peace on terms the Palestinians could accept.
This from Bill Van Auken of wsws:
In its most intense attack on Gaza since the Operation Cast Lead invasion of 2008-2009, Israel carried out an intense bombardment of the Palestinian territory Wednesday, beginning with the assassination of a top Hamas leader.
Ahmed Jabari, the head of Hamas’ military wing, was killed Wednesday afternoon together with another Hamas member in an Israeli missile strike on his car in Gaza City.
Last Saturday some Hamas militants fired on an IsraelI jeep, wounding four soldiers. The Hamas militants were responding to Israel’s recent provocative and increased aggressive entries into Gaza with tanks, bulldozers and militia.
Apparently, if one or more Hamas militants strike back against Israeli provocation this is a BLANK CHECK for Israel to KILL KILL KILL EVERYONE AND ANYONE WITHIN THE ENTIRE TERRITORY OF GAZA. To “ethnic cleanse” away! FULL OUT SLAUGHTER!!!!
This is just fine with the United States administration.
Apparently Israel has decided to take this opportunity to forcibly eradicate Hamas beginning this week and install a puppet regime in Gaza using non-stop violence.
Air strikes, tank fire, and shelling from naval ships have begun. A ground offensive is promised soon.
Anything goes.
OF COURSE FELLOW WAR CRIMINAL NATION UNITED STATES, WITH ITS U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT MAKING THE ANNOUNCEMENT, IS 100% BEHIND ISRAEL AND LIKE ISRAEL, OF COURSE, BLAMES HAMAS FOR THE CARNAGE ISRAEL HAS ALREADY PERPETRATED AND THAT WILL BE PERPETRATED ON ENTRAPPED INNOCENT PALESTINIAN CITIZENS.
The Orwellian label by Israel for this murderous offensive operation is “Pillar of Defense”. That's rich. This is what sends any one with conscience to the vomit bucket.
Bill Van Auken:
“Big explosions were rocking Gaza, as the Israeli air force struck at selected targets just before sundown, blasting plumes of smoke and debris high above the crowded city,” the Reuters news agency reported. “Panicking civilians ran for cover and the death toll mounted quickly.”
By early evening, at least nine Palestinians were reported killed, including two little girls under the age of five, Gaza’s health ministry reported. At least 64 more were wounded, and the toll from the bombardment was expected to grow.
Gaza’s Minister of Health Dr. Mofed Al Makhalalaty held a press conference outside of the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, calling for an international intervention to prevent another massacre in Gaza like the one conducted by Israel in 2008-2009. He warned that Gaza’s chronic shortage of medicines and medical supplies was being exacerbated by the escalating casualties, and that if the attacks continued the hospital would not be able to cope with the casualties.
Israel officials have announced that air strikes will “continue and escalate”, followed by a ground invasion. Israeli infantry units are now on stand-by in the south of Israel.
These are the words of Home Front Defense Minister Avi Dichter (former head of Shin Bet, the intelligence agency responsible for targeted assassinations) to the Israeli press: “We have no other choice; Israel must perform a reformatting of Gaza, and rearrange it, as we did in Judea and Samaria during Operation Defensive Shield.”
“Reformatting of Gaza”? Has the same kind of chilling connotations of sociopathic detachment as Obama’s coinage “Dispositon Matrix.”
Van Auken expands:
His [Dichter’s] reference was to the savage 2002 Israeli invasion and re-occupation of nearly all of the major cities in the occupied West Bank, including Jenin, where a particularly brutal raid on a refugee camp left 52 Palestinians dead. The operation killed a total of 216 Palestinians and wounded another 416.
The attack included a protracted siege of the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat in Ramallah, that was broken only after a deal was reached under US pressure.
Within a year, Arafat ceded the post of prime minister to Mahmoud Abbas, and died not long after under suspicious circumstances.
According to Van Auken this was the not so sweet tweet issued from Israeli Defense Forces: “We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Van Auken explains, is facing an election in January. Van Auken contends that there is nothing like military confrontation and security hysteria to distract its own citizenry from profound domestic problems and keep them dependent on an incompetent government.
Sound familiar?
Van Auken also explains that Israel with this offensive has broken a truce between Israelis and Palestinians that had been brokered by Egypt.
Again, over 1.5 million Palestinians live within the walled Gaza, the “world’s largest open-air prison.” Easy targets for a conscience-less Israel mendaciously feigning national defense to KILL, KILL, KILL INNOCENT MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN.
No reluctance to kill or maim even children. Such is the demonization of the Palestinians by the Israelis.
This is just fine with the United States administration.
Van Auken writes:
Palestinians in turn fired largely ineffective rockets into southern Israel. Between November 8 and November 13, at least six Palestinians were killed by the Israeli strikes, including three children, while another 52 were wounded, among them 12 children and six women, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
Before this latest round of violence, a total of 71 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza this year, as of November 6, and another 291 wounded. During the same period, attacks from Gaza on Israel claimed no lives, while injuring 19 Israelis.
In the last major Israeli ground assault on Gaza, Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009, at least 1,400 Palestinians were killed, roughly half of them civilians. A total of 13 Israelis died in the operation, all but three of them soldiers.
Another Operation Cast Lead? 1400 Palestinians died as opposed to 13 Israelis back then at the end of 2008. Such a ratio meant nothing to Israel or the U.S. then, as it will not matter now.
Israel’s unconscionable behavior is supported 100% by Washington.
Van Auken:
Israel’s President Shimon Peres revealed that he had informed President Barack Obama of the attack in a telephone conversation just a half hour after the assassination of Jabari, whom he described as a “mass murderer.” He used the same call to congratulate the US president on his re-election.
This is what spokesman Mark Toner of the US State Department had to say according to Van Auken:
“There is no justification for the violence that Hamas and other terrorist organizations are employing against the people of Israel. We call on those responsible to stop these cowardly acts immediately. We support Israel's right to defend itself, and we encourage Israel to continue to take every effort to avoid civilian casualties.”
That’s rich! Israel’s right to defend itself. One more merciless, mass-murdering pre-emptive strike in the name of “national defense”. But the U.S. is quite familiar with that kind of mendacity.
More innocent people to be mowed down and killed or maimed, women, children -- the “deciders” in the Israeli adminstration don’t begin to care.
Does the rest of the world know? Does the rest of the world care?
Not so much.
Alan Hart explains that the motto of Israel's Mossad is “By way of deception, thou shall do war.”
Israeli operation “Pillar of Defense”? “By way of deception, thou shall do war.”?
Obama will do nothing. Of course, we all know the U.S. Congress lives in Israel's pocket. The corporate media? Don't even ask.

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Comments
Go Israel!!!
Perhaps a new Nakba for the Pals...one can only hope.
Exhibit A -- in the bubble of murderous exceptionalism
n/t
Luckily...
Israel has both vision and action. Perhaps, though you are speaking of Hamas?
thank you for your comment
your comment is very valuable to us. Please do not hesitate to comment again.
For non-Hebrew-speakers
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nudnik
Just sayin'.
Yep...
Love to annoy lefty anti-semite ignoramuses.
Exhibit A -- in the bubble of murderous exceptionalism
n/t
I REALLY do not like comparisons to teh Nazis
South Africa, ok, Argentina under the dirty war, ok, even Serbia, but I do not think that comparisons to the Nazis is fair.
Yes
Not all militarists are Nazis, for example. Or all authoritarian leaders.
I even curate my trolls....
Israel is a state like any other. I am with Lord Palmerston:
So I don't see the pearl clutching on either side, since I don't see Israel as exceptionally admirable or exceptionally reprehensible.* (That's separate from the issue of whether AIPAC exerts undue influence in Washington.)
I don't think the Nazi comparison is useful, though there is a certain irony in Israel's ill treatment of a subjugated, captive population whose land it seized. Nazis are of the past; it would be more interesting to see if Israel has served as a test bed for newly evolved forms of statecraft.
NOTE * Show me the nation state whose founding myth does not involve the bloody slaughter of a "native" ppoulation! No doubt they exist, but the United States is not among them.
2. End the wars
Glenn Greenwald:
Yes
Civilized nations like the US and Israel behave the same towards murderous savages.
And the assassinations are not lawless. These people have declared war against us, and we are bringing the war to them. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Thank you for commenting
Your comment is very important to me. Please do not hesitate to comment again.
Bernhard* at MoonofAL has a good explanationn of what's going
on.
Al-Jaffari had to die because he might have been able to bring about a real longterm truce with Israel. Which does not compute for Bibi.
He needed to get rid of Al-Jaffari and he needed military action for his upcoming election.
I've found b to be astonishingly correct in his assessments.
*Ack. I've forgotten if it might be Bernard....
dc and lambert-tx so much for supporting that "ignoramus" label
it really illuminates a lot for me, sadly. Message received.
I guess that label of me was really important to YOU clearly, and maybe he or she has a lot more to deliver up since you are both so unconditionally encouraging.
Read the comments, please
Just because I don't agree with you on comparing Israel to the Nazis doesn't mean I think you're an ignoramus. You do understand that:
is a response to a troll right?
"Your argument is not you."
I recognized it
I recognized it as the standard response to trolling because I had seen it in a thread on trolling at naked capitalism. But since not everyone will recognize it or infer its meaning, maybe some kind of glossary entry for it would be helpful. I don't know how exactly it would work, might require standardizing the response or including an acronym (maybe TYFC for Thank You For Commenting?).
Heh
I propagated it over there. It seems to work pretty well.
I didn't invent it, either, but I can't remember where I picked it up.... Maybe Libby wasn't here the the primary wars, where we used it all the time...
It's too long to add to the glossary, and would the troll understand the abbeviation? I can add it to the Moderation policy though....
Glossary
What I like about the glossary is that a little question mark shows up next to the term and if you put the mouse over it the explanation shows up. So you don't need to read and remember the from the glossary or moderation section to recognize it. What I had in mind was to put the acronym (TYFC) in the glossary. Then one could write something like:
"TYFC. Your comment is very important to us and will be given top priority. Please do not hesitate to comment in the future."
Then TYFC would have the question mark next to it drawing everyone's attention to the fact that there's something there, and if you put the mouse on it could say something like "Standard response to a troll. Short for 'Thank you for commenting'" or so.
I am relieved! I was hurt and confused!
I know I was emotionally shooting from the hip on this one and it is a very sensitive issue. But I experienced some serious "crazymaking" with the "encouragement" response and repetition.
I appreciate this "method" now that I am aware of it.
Thanks.
I will be back to comment more on the subject matter itself later.
best, libby
Happens to the best of us
You should have seen how I felt when there was a wordpress glitch that moderated my comments the first night I was hanging out at NC! I definitely had a "nobody likes me everybody hates me I'm going to eat worms" mini-freakout.
athena, perfectly and empathetically put! ty!
I will go to that eating worms solo "mini-fest" with such little provocation, anyway. suddenly i felt i had an engraved invitation.
interesting re my blog above I called out on the ignoramus more than the anti-semite accusation. i figured the latter was on-topic at least. and i was provocative myself with my bubble comment, which was at least also on topic.
an AFCGE -- "another friggin' (cyber) growth experience" as one might say!
sigh. :-)
best, libby
It is a sensitive issue
I'm Israeli, so I've had my share of arguments about it, both with family and with other folks. I might write a short post about some of the ways such arguments reach a dead end.
I wish you would write that post, YesMaybe
"Dead end" arguments are an interesting phenomenon. I tend to try to steer clear of them. After all, not everything that is dynamic is in our favor... But things that are static are far less likely to be!
i second lambert's request
i'd really be interested in what you have to say.