Everything is foreseen, yet free will is granted…the mystical side of Judaism and life
by Reb Akiva @ Mystical Paths
Life Blogging – Blogging about my family life events during Gaza Conflict XXXIV in Israel. This is not a live blog of war events, it’s a live blog of my life in Israel with jets overhead and missiles down the road.
7:00 AM – Younger daughter won’t go to school on her own, she’s afraid. She travels through the Shomron (West Bank) and changes buses in a settlement (though we don’t live in the West Bank, it’s the shortest route to her school in Jerusalem). My wife decides to drive her all the way and follows her bus route. I didn’t mention to her to avoid it, and I’m worried. Arabs are protesting, and I don’t need my wife and daughter caught in a hailstorm of bricks.
8:30 AM – Reports come in of a deadly Hamas Arab Terrorist missile strike to the Israeli civilian town of Kiryat Malachi. Kiryat Malachi is a medium sized town with a significant Chabad chassidic presence and the site of my son’s yeshiva (who was sent home last night for Shabbat and due to safety being in missile strike range). First reports say several yeshiva students killed, we’re worried it could be my son’s yeshiva and his friends!
8:45 AM – Reports clarify, the missile hit a residential apartment building, killing 3 1/2 in the apartment. 2 rabbis and one 25 year old Chabad House rebbitzen (pregnant) who was visiting from her Chabad house in India were killed. May Hashem avenge their blood. Others, including several children and one infant, were severely injured. SHOOTING AT KIRYAT MALACHI IS A BLATENT WAR CRIME. THIS IS A CIVILIAN TOWN WITH NO INDUSTRIAL OR MILITARY INFRASTRUCTURE. AWAITING UNITED NATIONS CONDEMNATION AND INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT INDICTEMENTS OF HAMAS. (I know, dream on.)
9:00 AM – My wife returned, reports heavy security force presence in the areas she traveled through the West Bank to Jerusalem. No incidents occurred for her, though speaking with a co-worker later in the day from Gush Etzion, he reported some groups of Arabs throwing BOULDERS at passing cars near Efrat.
10:00 AM – Traffic to Jerusalem is light. People may be staying home. On arrival to the office, everyone is monitoring (via internet or phone apps or pads).
11:00 AM – Sorting through Arab propaganda. They hit Tel Aviv (no they didn’t, at least not at this time), they hit Dimona (site of Israel’s nuclear reactor – no they didn’t), they’ve killed hundreds of the enemy (unfortunately 3, not hundreds), they’ve got dead babies all over the place (pictures they’re showing are from Arab on Arab slaughter in Syria). Does anyone actually believe anything they say? (Unfortunately yes.)
12:00 AM – Army son calls, he just wants to talk. He’s nervous. A co-worker who’s son finished combat training a few months ago called to update his mother, they’re on the move (from where to where he couldn’t say, does he need to?)
1:00 PM – Picture of injured baby comes out. Doesn’t matter though, it’s just innocent Jewish blood.
2:00 PM – Co-worker (a native Israeli Jew) and I have a conversation.
Me: “What does it take for Israeli’s to freak out and push the government to go full force like a real war? (My personal thought is a missile hit on Tel Aviv, 3 of which have been tried so far but all shot down.)
Him: “A missile hitting Tel Aviv. Then the government would have no choice but to clear out the problem (rather than manage it), resulting in thousands of deaths, as mobs in Israel would be rioting to destroy the enemy. This is not good.”
Do the idiots in Gaza understand what they are doing?
4:45 PM – Another co-worker gets a call from his mother in Lower Tel Aviv. She’s freaking out, the air raid sirens are going off in her area. TEL AVIV!
5:00 PM – Co-worker gets another call from his mother, walls of her house shook with an explosion in the (not too distant) distance. Co-worker tries to reach his wife, then his father, can’t get through – lines overloaded. He runs out to head for home – even if everything is ok (G-d willing), he has little children that it could be a challenge for his wife to shepherd in an emergency.
5:15 PM – Reports state missile attack reaching for Tel Aviv missed in an open area. No injuries or damage.
6:43 PM – Friend in Tel Aviv area just messaged me… Air Raid sirens sound in TEL AVIV, sirens THEN BOOM. No reports yet of injuries or damage or impact point. Note parts of Tel Aviv are old areas, limited or no bomb shelters in many buildings (neighborhood shelters for long range air plane attack).
Replies
ROCKETS FIRED FROM EGYPT HIT ISRAEL...
Israel retaliates with 200 missile strikes on Gaza...
Air raids after 75,000 IDF reservists called up...
Hamas Headquarters Destroyed...
Iron Dome intercepts missiles aimed at Tel Aviv
[Video] Third attack on central city in three days intercepted.
The Iron Dome intercepted two Iranian-made Fajr-5 missiles aimed at Tel Aviv on Saturday. The missiles marked the third attack on the heavily populated central city in as many days, after Palestinian terrorists from Gaza fired four missiles toward the financial capital on Thursday and Friday, prompting red alert air raid sirens to sound in the city.
While police said that one of the missiles landed in an open area, a military source told The Jerusalem Post that the Iron Dome intercepted both missiles.
The Defense Ministry deployed an upgraded Iron Dome battery in the Gush Dan area in the center of Israel on Saturday morning, after rushing its production in light of escalation. The battery is the fifth Iron Dome system operational in Israel.
Islamic Jihad leader Khalid Batsh said on Saturday that the launch of rockets at Tel Aviv from Gaza show "the rules of the game have changed in the region," Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported.
The attack followed volley after volley of rockets aimed at southern towns on Saturday, as red alert sirens wailed repeatedly, warning residents to flee for cover. Two rockets also landed outside the capital Jerusalem on Friday. One rocket landed near a Palestinian village in the West Bank, shattering windows and scaring residents. Another struck a home in Ashdod directly, injuring five Israeli civilians.
Two rockets were fired at Rishon Lezion on Friday.
Also on Friday, rockets in Ashdod lightly injured five people, and caused damage to a house. Houses were also damaged in Eshkol and Be'er Tuviya. Four IDF soldiers were lightly injured by shrapnel from a rocket in the Eshkol area.
According to Israel Radio, over 70 rockets have fallen on the South on the fourth day of Operation Pillar of Defense. The Iron Dome rocket defense system intercepted 25 of the rockets.
In total, Palestinians fired 740 rockets toward the Jewish state since the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defense on Wednesday, but only around 30 landed in built-up areas. Iron Dome intercepted 245 projectiles in total, maintaining a 90% intercept rate. Only 27 of the rockets, about 4 percent, ultimately landed in urban areas.
The Israel Air Force struck 200 targets in the Gaza Strip overnight Friday, including 120 rocket launchers and 20 tunnels, bringing the total number of targets throughout Operation Pillar of Defense to 830.
Officials in Gaza said 47 Palestinians, including eight children and a pregnant woman, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes.
Among the targets was Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh's headquarters in the northern Gaza Strip early Saturday morning, according to the IDF Spokesman's Office.
Haniyeh was not at the headquarters during the IAF strike, Israel Radio reported. Other targets included the Hamas Interior Ministry and its police compound, as well as a training facility and rocket launching squads.
On Friday evening Defense Minister Ehud Barak received Cabinet approval for the IDF's request to increase the maximum number of reservists it could enlist to 75,000 ahead of a possible Gaza ground operation.
Debate over an incursion into Gaza comes after four days of constant rocket-fire from the Strip, which has reached as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for the first time, and targeted Israeli strikes against terrorist leaders and weapons depots in Gaza.
Politicians outside the government on Saturday demanded an exit strategy ahead of a possible ground operation.
Reuters contributed to this report
Rights activists see pattern of abuses by hardliners
* Islamist vigilantes emboldened by Mursi win
* Incidents fuel concerns of moderates, Christians
By Yasmine Saleh
CAIRO, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Mohamed Talaat didn't like the fact Christian music was being played at a party to promote interfaith harmony in the Egyptian town of Minya south of Cairo, so together with a group of like-minded Islamist hardliners, he showed up to put a stop to it.
It was simply un-Islamic to broadcast Christian songs, Talaat explained.
"Egypt is Islamic and so we all have to accept Islamic rules to halt any strife," he said by telephone.
Four months since Egypt elected veteran Muslim Brotherhood politician Mohamed Mursi as president, human rights activists say hardliners are trying to impose Islamist ways on society.
Although reliable data on social trends is hard to find in Egypt, many people believe that cases of religious intimidation have increased.
"There is no doubt that the rate of strange and violent practices by strict Islamists has increased tremendously since the election of Mursi," said Gamal Eid, founder of The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, a human rights group.
"We have in a few months seen many more of such incidents than we have seen in years before Mursi," he said.
Seemingly sporadic incidents are turning into what rights activists describe as an emerging pattern of abuses in the street by radicals, defying both the authority of the state and Mursi's own promises to protect personal freedoms.
From the fatal stabbing of a young man who was out with his fiancée to the case of a conservative teacher who cut schoolgirls' hair because it was uncovered, the examples are stacking up.
Such actions have grabbed local headlines and fuelled the worst-case-scenario fears of moderates worried by the rise of Islamists who were tightly reined in by Hosni Mubarak but have emerged as a major force since he was swept from power.
In Cairo, it seems little has changed. The capital is still a place where teenagers hold hands in public, Egyptian-brewed beer is sold and pleasure boats cruise the Nile blasting out the kind of pop music frowned upon by the hardliners.
And importantly for a tourism industry that employs one in eight Egyptians, it is business as usual at Red Sea beach resorts that are a major draw for Western tourists.
Yet, say activists, the hardliners are flexing their muscles more than before, particularly in some of the more far flung corners of a country of 83 million.
CHRISTIANS FEAR VIOLENCE
Egypt's Christian minority, the Middle East's largest, has lived with increasing fear of sectarian violence, which worsened in Mubarak's final weeks and the early days of the interim military rule that followed his ouster in February 2011.
Weeks before Mubarak was ousted, 23 Coptic Christians were killed in the bombing of a church on New Year's Day 2011. Five months later, with generals still in charge of the country, several churches in Cairo were torched and Christian houses and businesses destroyed. Fifteen people died and hundreds were wounded in the May 2011 religious unrest.
The period since Mursi took power has so far been spared violence on last year's scale, but there have been flare-ups, such as in August when about 16 people were injured in attacks on a church in a village near Cairo.
Christians say overall the atmosphere has become increasingly menacing as the presence of hostile Salafi Muslim hardliners in public life has grown more pronounced.
"Extremists' actions are worrying all Egyptians and not only Christians," said Karim Goher, a Christian and one of the organisers of the halted interfaith celebration in Minya.
INTIMIDATION
Since a group of youths killed a young man while he was out with his fiancée in the port city of Suez in July, there have been a steady stream of reports in a similar vein.
This week, a Suez grocer filed a legal complaint against a group of Salafis, or ultra-orthodox Muslims, who had threatened to enact religious justice against his son by cutting out his tongue. The Salafis accused the boy of insulting religion, according to Gharib Mahmoud, the grocer.
Self-appointed "committees for the propagation of virtue and elimination of vice" have surfaced elsewhere. The name evokes the religious police of Saudi Arabia, whose strict brand of Wahhabi Islam has inspired Salafis in Egypt in recent decades.
In Kafr el-Sheikh, a town in the Nile Delta north of Cairo, one such committee handed out flyers in late October warning it would "use force against violators of its instructions". Similar acts of intimidation have been reported by Christians in the middle-class Cairo district of Shubra.
"We warn you Christian people to give up your filthy trade in filthy statues and paintings," read a letter warning Victor Younan, an 83-year old Christian shopkeeper, to stop selling images of Jesus. Eight other Christians told Reuters they had received similar notes.
During his presidential campaign, Mursi reassured Egypt's Christians, estimated to represent about a tenth of the population, they would be protected. Yet many remain uneasy.
The same can be said for many moderate Muslims in a country where piety runs deep but a history of violent Islamist radicalism in the 1980s and 1990s has made many suspicious of hardliners willing to take the law into their own hands.
The radicals present a headache for the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties that have entered mainstream politics since Mubarak was toppled, such as the Nour Party, a salafist group which has distanced itself from what it describes as individual acts of vigilantism.
Mahmoud Ghozlan, the spokesman for the Brotherhood, said of the vice committees: "They don't represent the Brotherhood or most of Egypt's moderates, but only a group of minority, hardline individuals."
"We hope such incidents vanish soon."
But the Brotherhood has been criticised for failing to adequately spell out a moderate interpretation of Islam, leaving space for hardliners to propagate their ideas on the rights of women and Christians, for example.
"They say they will not discriminate, but don't say what that means in terms of actions," said Nabil Abdel Fattah, an Egyptian political analyst and expert on Islamist groups.
The authorities appear to be applying the law where possible: the three youths behind the Suez stabbing were handed 15-year sentences in September. The Christians who received the threatening letters in Shubra reported the incident to the police, though they say there have been no arrests.
The teacher who cut the hair of her unveiled pupils was given a suspended six-month jail sentence by a Luxor court this week.
The police did not get involved in Minya, where the organisers cancelled the interfaith celebration to avoid trouble. Planned for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, the Oct. 28 event had been named "Light in Times of Darkness" and marked an effort to ease friction in the shifting political landscape.
Musicians at the event were playing both Christian and Islamic music, before Islamists ordered them to stop, said Alaa Kabawy, a Muslim who was one of several thousand attendees.
"Similar events used to happen during Mubarak's time and nothing like this happened before. It was so shameful to see that happen," he said.
Israel kills 10 Palestinians, destroys Hamas Cabinet building
Saturday, 17 November 2012
By Al Arabiya with agencies
Israeli air strikes killed 10 Palestinians and destroyed the Hamas government building on Saturday as the Jewish state called up thousands more reservists for a possible ground war.
“The cabinet headquarters was targeted with four strikes and the government stresses that it remains committed to its positions and its stand alongside the people,” the Hamas government said in a statement.
Eyewitnesses and Hamas officials said the building located in the Nasser neighborhood of Gaza City was virtually leveled in the strike.
“The headquarters was completely destroyed and neighboring houses were damaged as a result of the barbaric Israeli bombing,” a Hamas official said.
After Palestinian militants fired rockets at the heart of Israel on Friday, Israeli warplanes carried out 180 air strikes overnight, Israel television reported.
“It’s like a real-life horror movie, what I saw today... It’s a miracle we’re still alive,” said 18-year-old Suha, standing outside her house.
Medics said 40 Gazans have been killed and more than 390 wounded since Israel launched its aerial campaign on Wednesday afternoon, with at least five militants among 10 people killed on Saturday.
As the toll rose, sirens sounds in Tel Aviv for a third day, sending people scuttling for cover a day after a rocket hit the sea near the city center, AFP correspondents said.
Officials said one rocket was intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system while a second hit somewhere in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.
International reactions
In Egypt, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel would be held to account for the children killed.
“Everyone must know that sooner or later there will be a holding to account for the massacre of these innocent children killed inhumanely in Gaza,” he said in a speech in Cairo.
The United States called for diplomacy and “de-escalation” as a way to end the crisis.
Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, told reporters the United States “wants the same thing as the Israelis want,” which is an end to rocket attacks on Israel by Palestinian militants in Gaza.
Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi, meanwhile, pledged to support Palestinians against “Israel's aggression” and to end the blockade of Gaza as Arab ministers began emergency talks on the conflict in Cairo Saturday.
“We pledge to the Palestinians in Gaza and everywhere to provide support to confront this aggression and break the siege,” he said at the start of the meeting.
Al- Nidal al-Mughrabi and Jeffrey Heller
GAZA/JERUSALEM | Sun Nov 18, 2012 6:17pm EST
(Reuters) - An Israeli missile killed at least 11 Palestinian civilians including four children in Gaza on Sunday, medical officials said, apparently an attack on a top militant that brought a three-storey home crashing down.
International pressure for a ceasefire seemed certain to mount in response to the deadliest single incident in five days of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.
Egypt has taken the lead in trying to broker a ceasefire and Israeli media said a delegation from Israel had been to Cairo for talks on ending the fighting, although a government spokesman declined to comment on the matter.
Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi met Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal and Islamic Jihad's head Ramadan Shallah as part of the mediation efforts, but a presidency statement did not say if they were conclusive.
Izzat Risheq, a close aide to Meshaal, wrote in a Facebook message that Hamas would agree to a ceasefire only after Israel "stops its aggression, ends its policy of targeted assassinations and lifts the blockade of Gaza".
Listing Israel's terms for ceasing fire, Moshe Yaalon, a deputy to the prime minister, wrote on Twitter: "If there is quiet in the south and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel's citizens, nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack."
Gaza health officials said 72 Palestinians , 21 of them children and several women have been killed in Gaza since Israel's offensive began. Hundreds have been wounded.
Israel gave off signs of a possible ground invasion of the Hamas-run enclave as the next stage in its offensive, billed as a bid to stop Palestinian rocket fire into the Jewish state. It also spelt out its conditions for a truce.
U.S. President Barack Obama said that while Israel had a right to defend itself against the salvoes, it would be "preferable" to avoid a military thrust into the Gaza Strip, a narrow, densely populated coastal territory. Such an assault would risk high casualties and an international outcry.
A spokesman for the Hamas-run Interior Ministry said 11 people, all of them civilians, were killed when an Israeli missile flattened the home of the Dalu family. Medics said four women and four children were among the dead.
Israel's chief military spokesman said Yihia Abayah, a senior commander of rocket operations in the Gaza Strip, had been the target.
The spokesman, Yoav Mordechai, told Israel's Channel 2 television he did not know whether Abayah was killed, "but the outcome was that there were civilian casualties". He made no direct mention of the destroyed dwelling.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier that he had assured world leaders that Israel was doing its utmost to avoid causing civilian casualties in the military showdown with Hamas.
"The massacre of the Dalu family will not pass without punishment," Hamas's armed wing said in a statement.
VIOLENCE
In other air raids on Sunday, two Gaza City media buildings were hit, witnesses said. Eight journalists were wounded and facilities belonging to Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV as well as Britain's Sky News were damaged.
An employee of the Beirut-based al Quds television station lost his leg in the attack, local medics said.
The Israeli military said the strike targeted a rooftop "transmission antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity", and that journalists in the building had effectively been used as human shields by Gaza's rulers.
For their part, Gaza militants launched dozens of rockets into Israel and targeted its commercial capital, Tel Aviv, for a fourth day, once in the morning and another after dark.
Israel's "Iron Dome" missile shield shot down all three rockets, but falling debris from the daytime interception hit a car, which caught fire. Its driver was not hurt.
In scenes recalling Israel's 2008-2009 winter invasion of Gaza, tanks, artillery and infantry massed in field encampments along the sandy, fenced-off border. Military convoys moved on roads in the area newly closed to civilian traffic.
Netanyahu said Israel was ready to widen its offensive.
"We are exacting a heavy price from Hamas and the terrorist organisations and the Israel Defence Forces are prepared for a significant expansion of the operation," he said at a cabinet meeting, giving no further details.
The Israeli military said 544 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since Wednesday, killing three civilians and wounding dozens. Some 302 were intercepted and 99 failed to reach Israel and landed inside the Gaza Strip, it added.
Israel's declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and force the Islamist Hamas to stop rocket fire that has bedevilled Israeli border towns for years and is now displaying greater range, putting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the crosshairs.
Israel withdrew settlers from Gaza in 2005 and two years later Hamas took control of the impoverished enclave, which the Israelis have kept under blockade.
OBAMA CAUTIONS AGAINST GROUND CAMPAIGN
At a news conference during a visit to the Thai capital Bangkok, Obama said Israel has "every right to expect that it does not have missiles fired into its territory".
He added: "If this can be accomplished without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza that is preferable. That's not just preferable for the people of Gaza, it's also preferable for Israelis because if Israeli troops are in Gaza they're much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded," he said.
Obama said he had been in regular contact with Egyptian and Turkish leaders - to secure their mediation in bringing about a halt to rocket barrages by Hamas and other Islamist militants.
"We're going to have to see what kind of progress we can make in the next 24, 36, 48 hours," he added.
Diplomatic efforts continued on Sunday when French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius met Israeli officials and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.
"It is absolutely necessary that we move urgently towards a ceasefire, and that's where France can be useful," Fabius told French television, adding that war must be avoided.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will be in Egypt on Monday for talks with Mursi, the foreign ministry in Cairo said. U.N. diplomats earlier said Ban was expected in Israel and Egypt this week to push for an end to the fighting.
Israel's operation has so far drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called its right to self-defence, but there was also a growing number of appeals from them to seek an end to the hostilities.
Poll shows gap between Republicans and Democrats in backing Israel in Gaza
November 20, 2012
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- A CNN poll showed a considerable gap between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to backing Israel in the current Gaza conflict.
In the CNN poll published Monday, respondents were asked whether "Israel was justified or unjustified in taking military action against Hamas and the Palestinians in the area known as Gaza." Among Democrats, 40 percent said Israel was "justified," compared to 74 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of independents.
In all, 57 percent of those polled said Israel was justified in launching the operation in the Gaza Strip.The poll, carried out by ORC International in 1,023 phone interviews from Nov. 16 to Nov. 18, has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
Israel launched air and naval attacks on Gaza on Nov. 14 after an intensfication of rocket fire from Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas.
Meanwhile in a Gallup poll, Americans cited keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon among the top three priorities of President Obama's second term.
Gallup asked respondents to rank 12 issues as "extremely," "very," "somewhat," "not too," and "not at all" important.
The top three ranked were taking "major steps to restore a strong economy and job market," with 95 percent of respondents ranking it as "extremely" or "very" important; taking "major steps to ensure the long-term stability of Social Security and Medicare," ranked "extremely" or "very" important by 88 percent of respondents; and preventing "Iran from developing a nuclear weapon," cited by 79 percent of respondents as "extremely" or "very" important.
The rankings broke the same when respondents were identified as Democrats, Republicans and Independent, although the numbers were slightly different.
Gallup polled 1,009 adults by phone Nov. 9-12. The results have a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
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David Atkins, co-writer with Digby at Hullaballoo, responds -- indirectly -- to my recent post ("Blogging and Nothingness") on the silence of leading progressive bloggers about the ongoing, Obama-supported slaughter in Gaza. Below is his response in full, followed by my reply.
David Atkins:
There has been some annoyance in some quarters at the lack of comprehensive coverage of the events in Gaza by the much of the most widely read parts of the progressive blogosphere. I agree that the coverage has been limited. But there are three good reasons for that:
1) Incoherent, hateful backlash. The fact is that it's impossible to say anything substantive about the Israel-Palestine conflict without being called a hateful anti-Semite, or a hateful bloodthirsty imperialist. Most hilarious is the notion that silence on the issue is caused by defense of the Administration, as if most of the progressive blogosphere had been somehow aggressive against the Bush Administration for failure to be concerned about the Palestinian people. If one examines the archives, one will see that most of the big sites from Atrios to DailyKos to TPM to Hullabaloo and the rest have largely refrained from commenting too much on the issue for years, long before Obama took office. That's in large part because nothing can be said about it without eliciting a horrifying deluge of asinine commentary that no other issue seems to generate. Especially for unpaid bloggers more concerned with climate change, the predations of the financial sector, the ongoing assault against the middle class and women's rights, etc., it's often not worth the headache of being called a vicious anti-semitic terrorist enabler and/or imperialist apartheid murderer--often for the exact same post.
2) There are no good guys here. Bibi Netanyahu is a horrible person, and Likud is filled with horrible people. They're basically the Israeli version of Dick Cheney and John Bolton, but with a religious belief in their right to steal land that belongs to others.
Hamas, meanwhile, is a murderous organization of cutthroats who refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist and want to drive every Jew out of the land they believe their God owes them.
Israeli policy pretends to want to keep control of illegal settlements that continue to incur into Palestinian lands while secretly encouraging it. Whatever goes for Palestinian authority pretends to want peace and self-determination while doing next to nothing to prevent rockets from being fired at Israeli civilians. Hamas knows that there can be no peace without recognizing Israel's fundamental right to exist, but they can't even bring themselves to put those words down on a negotiating contract. Israel knows that there can be no pressure on Hamas to negotiate fairly as long as Palestine remains an Apartheid-style lockdown zone with continued encroachment from settlement.
So we get the usual cycle of violence with no end in sight.
3) There's nothing we can do about it. It makes sense to blog about things that we can theoretically do something about. The Gaza situation is frankly hopeless at the moment. America is not going to abandon its commitment to protect the only functioning democracy in the region and the only dependable national refuge for the Jewish people. The American people can and should eschew support for Netanyahu and Likud, but it's not as if relations between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu aren't already frosty. Netanyahu quite obviously wanted Romney to win, and there can be little doubt that Obama would prefer to deal with someone from Labour/Kadima. Defunding Israel isn't an option, particularly given the hostility of other Middle Eastern powers to Israel's very existence.
So that leaves bloggers advocating for cooler heads and changes in leadership on both sides of a dispute over which American activists have very little control, and in which there are no clear-cut good guys. Syria is less complicated, frankly, with much greater suffering and bloodshed--and it's not exactly been a huge topic of debate in the progressive blogosphere, either.
So don't expect a lot of coverage of the issue. Most of us don't want to take a lot of stupid abuse from nutty people for speaking powerlessly over an issue in which both sides deserve plenty of scorn.
My reply:
Taking these justifications point by point, here, as I understand it, is the essential argument for progressives remaining silent on the slaughter in Gaza.
1) We are scared. People might call us bad names, and that would be unpleasant. And it would also, somehow, interfere with our ability to support other causes. Do you want us to be like that fool Martin Luther King Jr., who didn't stick to his niche issue of civil rights but also took on murderous American militarism and economic injustice? That's not savvy, that's not how to get things done. Anyway, look what happened to him when he stuck his neck out too far.
2) We are childish. There are no "good guys" we can root for in a comic-book version of good vs. evil. [How about rooting for the innocent people being slaughtered? Are they not "good" enough?] Also, we are too uninterested to read of any context or history beyond the day's headlines, so we have no idea about the many efforts made by Hamas and others, including Israelis, to "prevent rockets from being fired at Israeli civilians." We also have nothing to say about Israel's endless provocations -- killing children, blockades, assassinations, etc. -- that produce the missiles fired in retaliation. In short, because the institutional leaders on both sides are morally compromised individuals instead of clearly marked good guys and bad guys, we have nothing at all to say about innocent people being killed -- in our name, with American weaponry, American money and the full support of the president we have just worked so hard to re-elect.
3) We are helpless. You should only blog about things you can "theoretically" do something about. So apparently there is nothing anyone can ever do -- even "theoretically" -- to prevent the United States government from giving its full and unstinting support to the ongoing operation in Gaza. Even though George W. Bush himself condemned Israeli "extrajudicial assassinations," even though Ronald Reagan condemned the Israeli strike on Iraq's nuclear plant (and actually suspended arms shipments to Israel in protest), it is now completely impossible for anyone, anywhere, to put the slightest pressure on Barack Obama to voice even the mildest criticism of Israel's actions. So what's the point of using one's public platform to register even the smallest complaint about one's government using its money, weapons and full political muscle to support the slaughter of innocent people?
However, it must be theoretically possible to, say, convince Barack Obama not to sign a "grand bargain" that will gut social programs and entrench brutal economic and social injustice for generations. And how does one do that? By writing about it, agitating about it, talking about it, protesting against it, and so on -- as our leading progressives do every day. And even though the record of the past four years shows that Barack Obama does not pay the slightest attention to these efforts -- and has recently reiterated that the $4 trillion economy-wrecking, society-degrading "deal" he offered Republicans earlier is "still on the table" -- it is at least theoretically possible that strenuous protest and pressure might cause some alteration of policy.
I think this is true. And I think it's an effort worth making, however slight its chance of success. But why does this not also apply to Obama's policy toward Israel and the Middle East? Instead of the gritty realism, savvy tactics and nuanced analyses we see on the Grand Bargain, on Gaza all we get are childish, cartoonish exaggerations: the idea that even criticising Israeli actions -- as George Bush did, as Ronald Reagan did -- is somehow equivalent to "abandoning Israel" and the Jewish people. This is puerile nonsense. (It is also an example of the aforementioned "incoherent, hateful backlash" in action, albeit in more muted, tasteful form. But it carries the same implication: "What, do you want us to abandon the Jewish people, drive them from their only refuge? What are you, some kind of Nazi?")
*
Look, people can concentrate on whatever issues they want. I do it; everyone who writes does it. I just found it remarkable -- and still do -- that several prominent liberal bloggers dedicated to analyzing American policy and politics had nothing at all to say about innocent people being slaughtered with the full support -- physical, financial and political -- of the American political establishment, which is the focus of their blogs. Not a single word on the subject -- positive, negative, even in passing -- nothing at all, day after day, death after death.
However, during the last major assault on Gaza, in the last days of the Bush administration, there were several mentions of Gaza on Hullaballoo, including a post from Digby on the horror of watching the slaughter on CNN. On Kos, there were no fewer than 29 "front-paged diary" entries that mentioned Gaza in December 2008-January 2009, including long columns of analysis, and pieces mocking George Bush for his claims to seek Middle East peace ("just ask the people of Gaza"), mocking Joe the Plumber for his "reporting" from the Israeli side of the attack, and so on.
All of this, I might add, was mixed in with other issues of the day: the economy, the predations of the financial sector, women's rights, etc. Apparently, when George Bush was still in office, it "made sense" to blog about Gaza, to criticize the Israeli actions AND the American support for them, and still continue to advocate for one's other concerns.
But now we are told that it is not even theoretically possible to influence American policy on this issue. It is pointless -- "frankly hopeless" -- to even try. So let the children die, with American lead shredding their flesh and American money loading the guns and American politicians -- including the Democrats our progressives worked so hard for -- officially recording their full support of these atrocities.
Again, people should write what they like. If an issue doesn't interest you, or if it's too complicated for you, or if it scares you, then by all means ignore it. But it seems strange to me that those who are publicly dedicated to building a better, more just society and a more ethical, morally responsible government would simply shrug their shoulders, give up hope and keep quiet when their government -- led by a man they themselves fought to elect -- gives its total support to such murderous deeds.
It makes one think that they have made their own "Grand Bargain": countenancing crime and murder (the drone wars, Obama's death squads, indefinite detention, support for state terror in Gaza, etc., etc.) in exchange for the hope -- the "theoretical possibility" -- that their support for such a system will be rewarded with a few crumbs and gestures on the domestic front. As I said before, this kind of "progressivism" seems to me to be a most paltry, curdled and complicit thing. It has lashed itself to the machine of power, and it will, in the end, go wherever power takes it.
(UPDATED BELOW)
"Too much of nothing
Can make a man a liar."
-- Bob Dylan
"Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again."
-- Shakespeare, King Lear
It sure was a quiet weekend in the progressive blogosphere, where peace, justice and the alleviation of human suffering is an earnest, burning concern. At Eschaton, Atrios gave an amiable shrug and declared, "I got nothing to say." Digby and her co-pilot, David Atkins, did have a few things to say -- about Sarah Palin, General Pants-Down Petraeus, the grubby "Grand Bargaining" in the Beltway, and several examples of the stupidity and perfidy of right-wing Republicans. The posters at Daily Kos plied the same themes.
But even for those who didn't got nothing to say, it was all very much in a low-key, mopping-up, post-election mode. It seemed as if there were no major news events going on anywhere in the world that involved the violent, unjust infliction of human suffering, with the direct monetary, military and political support of United States government and its entire bipartisan political and media establishments. Nothing that might grab the attention -- even in passing -- of writers publicly and professionally dedicated to discussing and analyzing major news events involving American policy, politics and the media.
Anything like that going on this weekend? Anyone? Digby, Dave? No? Kos and the gang? Anything? Atrios?
Nope. They got nothing.
Not on Friday. Not on Saturday. Not by Sunday evening (as I write this).
If you were a follower of many of the major "progressive" bloggers, you could have passed the weekend blissfully unaware that the American-armed, American-backed Israeli military was busily raining death into the cramped and crowded concentration camp of Gaza. Children dying, old people being blown to bits in their houses, the Israeli government ordering a massive call-up of troops and reserves for a possible invasion; top officials from Egypt and Tunisia flying into the besieged camp to show solidarity, mass demonstrations across the Middle East, some meeting with violent repression, others threatening to escalate into revolutionary outpourings. On every side: death, turmoil, suffering, chaos, whole nations in ferment -- and Barack Obama standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Benjamin Netanyahu in defending assassination, aggression and the bombardment of defenseless civilians with massive military force.
For many of our leading progressives, none of this was of the slightest interest. Even as the stage is clearly being set for a rerun of the "Cast Lead" operation in 2008-2009 -- a bloodbath that killed hundreds of innocent people and was followed by a strangulating blockade -- our earnest concerners could not be stirred to even a passing comment on the developments. The idea that someone somewhere was touting Sarah Palin for 2016 was obviously far more interesting -- far more concerning -- than the American-backed bloodshed in Gaza. After all, what if Sarah Palin did become president, huh? (Get your 2016 lesser evilism going now! Start early, avoid the rush!) Why, she might declare her full support for military assaults on civilian areas in Gaza, just like that evil George Bush did in 2008. And you know you don't want anyone like that to be president, do you?
But beyond the Palin-haunted, poll-poring, got-nothing confines of the progressosphere, here's what been going on just today, as reported in the New York Times (which most top progressives at least take a glance at occasionally, I believe):
Israeli forces killed at least 11 people, including several children, in a single airstrike that destroyed a home here on Sunday ... Among the dead were five women and four small children, The Associated Press reported, citing a Palestinian health official. ... Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel warned of a “significant” expansion in the onslaught, which has already killed over 50 people, many of them civilians.
... Speaking on Sunday from Bangkok, President Obama condemned missile attacks by Palestinian fighters in Gaza and defended Israel’s right to protect itself. “There’s no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” Mr. Obama said in his first public comments since the violence broke out. “We are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Here the president ignores the fact, also reported -- albeit obscurely -- by the NYT, that the few sporadic and ineffective missiles from Gaza "raining down" on Israel before the attack were in fact retaliation for repeated missile strikes, mortar fire, assassinations and civilian deaths caused by Israeli military incursions into Gaza. But, as we noted here the other day, Gaza has no "right to defend itself;" indeed, it very clearly must "tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders." Thus saith the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
But that was not all he saith. As the NYT reports:
Mr. Obama said Sunday that he had spoken several times with Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Morsi and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey in hopes of finding a way to address Israel’s security concerns without further ramping up military operations. “We are actively working with all the parties in the region to see if we can end those missiles being fired without further escalation of violence in the region,” he said.
This is strange; for before the attack began, there was already an "actively working" deal to "end the missiles being fired without further violence in the region" -- as the New York Times itself reported on Friday. But as Israeli negotiator Gershon Baskin wrote in the Times, this agreement was aborted when the Israelis assassinated the very Hamas minister who was negotiating the deal. This "extrajudicial killing" -- part of an attack that, of course, killed several civilians as well, including the 11-month-old son of a BBC cameraman -- was the start of the current operation. And it led, as the Israelis knew -- and hoped -- it would, to retaliatory strikes by Hamas. Baskin writes:
I was able to learn firsthand that Mr. Jabari wasn’t just interested in a long-term cease-fire; he was also the person responsible for enforcing previous cease-fire understandings brokered by the Egyptian intelligence agency. Mr. Jabari enforced those cease-fires only after confirming that Israel was prepared to stop its attacks on Gaza. On the morning that he was killed, Mr. Jabari received a draft proposal for an extended cease-fire with Israel, including mechanisms that would verify intentions and ensure compliance. This draft was agreed upon by me and Hamas’s deputy foreign minister, Mr. Hamad, when we met last week in Egypt. ...
Israel has used targeted killings, ground invasions, drones, F-16s, economic siege and political boycott. The only thing it has not tried and tested is reaching an agreement (through third parties) for a long-term mutual cease-fire. ... The difference between the proposal I drafted in cooperation with my Hamas counterpart and past proposals was that it included both a mechanism for dealing with impending terror threats and a clear definition of breaches. This draft was to be translated and shared with both Mr. Jabari and Israeli security officials, who were aware of our mediation efforts.
The proposal was at least worth testing. Moreover, it included the understanding that if Israel were to take out a real ticking bomb — people imminently preparing to launch a rocket — such a strike would not be considered a breach of the cease-fire and would not lead to escalation.
Instead, Mr. Jabari is dead — and with him died the possibility of a long-term cease-fire.
In other words, the Netanyahu government deliberately scuttled a deal which would have provided exactly what it says it is seeking. They knew the assassination would kill the deal; they knew it would provoke violent relatiation. That is precisely what they wanted.
What's more, it is absolutely impossible that Barack Obama did not know this as well. The US government had to know these negotiations were going on. And even if one takes the position of the extreme Obamalators and believes that the innocent president was kept uninformed of these developments before the attack -- just as he was protected from all knowledge that his FBI was investigating his CIA director for months on end -- he certainly knew of the plan after it was published in the New York Times on November 16 -- two days before he made his statement on November 18.
In other words -- and brace yourself for this shocking revelation -- Barack Obama was lying through his teeth when he regurgitated his empty pieties on Sunday.
Imagine the kind of play Kos would have given to such sinister mendacity had it issued from the gorge of evil George. Imagine what razor-sharp slashings of moral outrage we would have seen from Digby n' Dave had Dick Cheney trotted out such threadbare lies to support the murder of a key official in the midst of peace negotiations. And is it conceivable that Atrios would have "got nothing" if Condi Rice had been issuing "full-throttle support" for an operation that has set the most volatile region in the world ablaze with death and turmoil? No; yet if a Democrat arms, pays for and supports such things, there is no outrage, there is no criticism, there is no analysis. There is only ... nothing.
But Shakespeare knew the self-deluded Lear was wrong: something can indeed come from nothing. In fact, the whole murderous course of the tragedy issues from Cordelia's "nothing." And although the assault on Gaza is as nothing to the progressives, something is happening there. Even as I've been writing this, more details have come in about the attack mentioned in the NYT story above. From the Guardian:
At least 11 members of one family, including five women and four children, were killed when Israel bombed a house in Gaza City on Sunday as the five-day-old war claimed more civilian lives with no sign of a letup in the intense bombardment.
The air strike flattened the home of the Dalou family in the Sheikh Radwan district of Gaza City, causing the biggest death toll in a single incident since the offensive began last Wednesday.
The bodies of the children were pulled from the rubble and taken to the morgue at the Shifa hospital. The dead also included an 80-year-old woman. ... Witnesses said there were chaotic scenes as the dead and injured were brought to the Shifa hospital, which has been on emergency footing since the start of Operation Pillar of Defence. The bodies of four young children lay on two metal trays in the morgue, covered in dust and blood. A crowd of onlookers outside became increasingly distressed as the body of the children's mother was wheeled in, covered in blankets.
But this is of no apparent concern to those so earnestly concerned with peace, justice and the alleviation of human suffering. Those children, that old woman, the grieving survivors -- they must be the wrong people suffering. Or perhaps it's just that the right person is aiding, abetting and supporting their suffering. No need for comment. No need to notice. Nothing to see here.
And thus political tribalism curdles into moral cretinism.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, back in the real world, the London Review of Books has more on the process of deliberate provocation -- and the deliberate scuttling of peace deals -- that lay behind the current round of slaughter in Gaza.
... This time round, on 8 November, a week before Ahmad Jabari was assassinated, Israeli soldiers shot dead 13-year-old Ahmad Abu Daqqa while he was playing football outside his house in Gaza. Palestinian militants retaliated with a bomb and then a missile fired at an armoured personnel carrier, wounding several Israeli soldiers. Israel responded by shelling first another football field and then a mourning tent, killing four civilian non-combatants and wounding dozens. Four Israelis were wounded by the inevitable Palestinian missile volleys that followed. Egypt’s General Intelligence Directorate, which typically brokers security agreements relating to the Gaza Strip, stepped up its efforts.
By 12 November, amid demands from Israel’s Home Front Defence minister, Avi Dichter, to ‘reformat’ the Gaza Strip and calls from the transport minister, Yisrael Katz, to cut off the supply of all goods and services to Gaza’s population of 1.5 million until they begged for air, the Egyptians had crafted a ceasefire proposal that was accepted by the Palestinians and – according to the Egyptians – Israel too. With responsibility not only for fighting Israel but also enforcing agreements with it, Jabari began implementing the ceasefire. Two days later he was blown up. ...
Pummelling Gaza yet again was intended to remind all concerned – not least the new Egypt – who makes the rules, though it would also reassure the Israeli electorate they need not fear the prospect of Obama punishing Israel for Netanyahu’s embrace of the Romney/Adelson ticket. As expected, the Obama White House has reiterated its commitment to Israel, and Congress has been busy passing unanimous resolutions supporting Israel’s right to self-defence in its colonial possessions. The positions of most European states have been only marginally less obscene. …
Israeli hesitation about what may lie ahead, in combination with furious diplomacy directed at Washington by Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and others, may lead to a new ceasefire agreement in the coming days. If not, the primary issue for those committed to peace in the Middle East will be to ensure Israel is deprived of the impunity it enjoyed during and after Operation Cast Lead.