Israel bombs Gaza

[Guest]

195 people dead, according to the BBC, in what is the heaviest Israeli assault on Gaza since 1967.

This is apparently a response to Hamas firing rockets into Israel a few days ago (zero casualties resulted), which was itself a response to Israel assassinating three Hamas members earlier in the week.

They must have carpet-bombed the place for that many people to be dead.

EDIT -- the main headline says 195 dead, the story itself says 155. Typical shit subbing from the BBC.

From the Guardian website:

But opinion polls shows that Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of the rightwing Likud, is likely to beat Livni's centrist Kadima party in Israel's elections, set to take place in February.

Wonderful.

[Bruno]

Israel bombs Gaza

The article I just read mentioned 3000 mortar attacks over the past year. What would anyone expect?

[DCI Harry Batt]

Israel bombs Gaza

Israel is forever bombimg Gaza. Along with trying to starve its inhabitants, that's what they do. Again, it's one of those situations where we must be outraged, even though we can't be surprised.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Israel bombs Gaza

More air strikes today. 271 dead yesterday.

On the plus side, though, Israel did allow a lorry or two in, so not everyone starved yesterday. Which is nice of them.

And Gordon Brown is concerned. So I reckon everything will be ok.

[anton pulisov]

Israel bombs Gaza

Feck, I though that bollix Netanyahu's career was finished a long time ago.

The worst thing about him is that the Western press love him because he speaks perfect English with an American accent. Never mind that he's evil.

[ad hoc]

Israel bombs Gaza

The article I just read mentioned 3000 mortar attacks over the past year. What would anyone expect?

Gaza is essentially one long overcrowded slum, Bruno, so even if this was actually a "response" to the mortar/rocket attacks that Israel claims it is, bombing Gaza does not even get you as far as the euphemism of collateral damage - it's basically indiscriminate killing which at best (at best) is collective punishment. [What it actually is, of course, is the most cynically murderous form of electioneering known to man]

[Bruno]

Israel bombs Gaza

I'm unable to really take sides in the Israel-Palestine dispute. Indiscriminate killing is indiscriminate killing whether it's mortar shells or helicopter attacks.

If I were in charge of the long overcrowded slum, I hope I would recommend not repeatedly & indiscriminately shelling the side that would be guaranteed to respond in the indiscriminate way it just has. I've never been sympathetic to the 'this is our only means of asserting ourselves' line that some Palestinians use. I'd rather starve to death because of someone else's injustice than kill other innocents out of revenge.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Israel bombs Gaza

Indiscriminate killing is being done by one side, and not by the other.

[Bruno]

Israel bombs Gaza

This is one of those 'I'm getting my news from the wrong sources' situations, isn't it.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Israel bombs Gaza

I don't know. Whence do you you get news of indiscriminate killings caused by "rockets" fired from Gaza?

[ad hoc]

Israel bombs Gaza

I think it's important to not conflate the people firing the rockets with the Palestinians, for a start ,Bruno. (I don't think you are, but the logic of the bombing requires that people do)

[Bruno]

Israel bombs Gaza

Well, the figure '3000 mortars fired into Israel over the past year' that I cited above was from a article on either Yahoo, BBC, or CNN, I forget which. It was a mainstream news report.

[Bruno]

Israel bombs Gaza

ad hoc wrote:

I think it's important to not conflate the people firing the rockets with the Palestinians, for a start ,Bruno. (I don't think you are, but the logic of the bombing requires that people do)

Not any more than I would ever conflate any collection of criminals or guerillas or freedom fighters (however one wants to characterize them) with the entirety of the populace they claim to represent. I might conflate them with Hamas specifically, though, for example. I dunno, I'm sort of at the mercy of what I read in the papers on this.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Israel bombs Gaza

Nothing about indiscriminate killing though, BM?

[ad hoc]

Israel bombs Gaza

Did the article say how many of these 3000 rockets/mortars had done any damage? How many people were injured? How many died?

Did it say how many Gazans had died from the siege so far in the same period? How many attacks Israel had launched on Gaza in that period? How many dead/wounded?

I'm just interested to see what kind of balance the article had. You see in my experience the answer tends to be almost none.

(This post is in no way to be read as condoning Hamas or any actions taken in their name, blah blah etc and so on)

[Bruno]

Israel bombs Gaza

So are we distinguishing between 'indiscriminate attacks' and 'indiscriminate killing'? I see the practical difference but not, I don't think, the moral difference.

Ad hoc, no, the article didn't attempt to recreate the entire context, and was mainly there to point out that Israel's recent attacks were the most extensive and severe, as discrete events go, since 1967.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Israel bombs Gaza

I'm just taking your words at their face value, BM. If you've decided that what you said was wrong, and you want to say something different instead, go ahead.

[ad hoc]

Israel bombs Gaza

But these things always, but always like to present Israel's actions as a "response" to something (like rocket attacks). The rocket attacks are never reported as being the response of certain people to the situation whereby 1.x million people are forced to live in appalling conditions in what amounts to an open prison/ghetto, under a permanent state of semi-siege with no obvious end to that situation anywhere at all on the horizon.

I think the rocket attacks are fucking stupid and senseless, but then again I don't have to live in that hell hole.

[Guest]

Israel bombs Gaza

It's worth investigating how many people are killed by these rocket attacks, Bruno. When Israel carpet-bombed Lebanon, killing thousands, much was made by Israel (and, by extension, the mainstream media) about months and months of terrible rocket attacks across the border and their massive effect on civilians. After a bit of digging I found statistics on the Israeli government's own website confirming that the number of civilian deaths was fewer than ten. The mainstream media hadn't filled in that little gap. Equally, Israel's complaints about incursions into their sovereign territory were faithfully reported without mentioning that they strayed regularly into Lebanese territory. BBC, CNN etc just aren't reliable at all.

[Guest]

Israel bombs Gaza

Whenever I see anyone interviewed on either side of this conflict, their first response to criticism of what their side has done is to avoid the criticism and say 'but the other lot are worse!' This type of attitude has to be changed before anything can be achieved. The whole situation seems desperately sad to me. I'm no expert, and maybe it's a bit naive, but surely some kind of 'blank slate' approach has to be taken...

[Guest]

Israel bombs Gaza

If Hamas really have lobbed an average of ten rockets a day at Israel for the past 365 days, you'd think that, at a minimum, a couple of hundred Israelis would be dead as a result, and we would certainly have heard about it.

So if these large-scale fatalities have (fortunately) not actually come to pass, it suggests either that Hamas are shooting the vast majority of their shells at waste ground, or that they possess the crappiest mortar equipment in the world.

[anton pulisov]

Israel bombs Gaza

When the IRA bombed civilians in the UK, the British government did not respond by killing hundreds of civilians in air raids on Belfast and Derry. It would have been very wrong and would have only made things even worse. Just look at the uproar that Bloody Sunday caused and imagine what would have happened if the UK had pursued the Israeli approach.

But Israel is a relatively new state compared to Britain. Presumably they are still in their Cromwellian phase.

[Guest]

Israel bombs Gaza

Bryantop wrote:

Feck, I though that bollix Netanyahu's career was finished a long time ago.

The worst thing about him is that the Western press love him because he speaks perfect English with an American accent. Never mind that he's evil.

Even a corruption scandal a few years ago couldn't get rid of him.

Will Self once wrote that it was a nice little bit of poetic justice which inserted the Swiftian "yahoo" into Netanyahu's surname. Even by the wretched standards of Israeli politics, he's a bad 'un.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Israel bombs Gaza

A couple of eye-witness accounts

Outside my home, (which is close to the 2 largest universities in Gaza) a missile fell on a large group of young men, university students, they'd been warned not to stand in groups, it makes them an easy target, but they were waiting for buses to take them home. 7 were killed, 4 students and 3 of our neighbors kids, young men who were from the same family (Rayes) and were best friends. As I'm writing this I can hear a funeral procession go by outside, I looked out the window a moment ago and it was the 3 Rayes boys, They spent all their time together when they were alive, they died together and now their sharing the same funeral together. Nothing could stop my 14 year old brother from rushing out to see the bodies of his friends laying in the street after they were killed. He hasn't spoken a word since.

[anton pulisov]

Israel bombs Gaza

Obama has arrived in the nick of time.

Imagine a world with Ahaminejad, Bush and Netenyahu all in power at the same time.