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• Jeff January 19, 2009 5:58 pm

  

  The silence you speak of is in response to words, not bombs.

  You didn’t answer my question about collective punishment..

  To answer your question: The wall was a good idea, but there should have been as much effort brought to making sure the wall didn’t create problems. Sure, it solved one problem, but I think further outrage could have been avoided had it not been done in such an F-all-of-you way.

  The best thing Israel cold do is stop the offence. Fall back to defense for a period of three years. Take the boot off the throat in every way. That way, when the militants continue to strike, everything you have said rings true. They are revealed as the assholes they are. The trouble they cause will be seen as being caused by them

  The thing you miss at the moment is that right now, in the eyes of the average Palestinian, forget the west here, ISRAEL, not Hamas, is the force of woe, not Hamas. They didn’t see Hamas kill their father!

  Back off and look civilized is my advice for Hamas as well as Israel.

  For instance, if Hamas does nothing for the next ten years and Israel continues the boot on the throat, Israel looks just as bad.

  I do encourage non-violent protest on the part of Palestinians, who are nearly 100% non-combatant yet are nearly 100% suffering. I think they can learn something from Gandhi. If they studied Gandhi and mimicked him, Israel would be forced to stop the strong arm tactics.

  BTW, being black, I see this from a different angle. I see black people in America being beaten and killed and the cops not being punished usually. Indeed, Mark Fuhrman of the OJ case was forced to move to the LA area, where he confessed to even more brutal acts. As a consultant to a book about women in the police force, he stayed on race and confessed to framing interracial couples, wanting to build a bomb that could kill all black people, and even the murder of a young woman in the projects. He did all this on tape. Now he’s a FOX news contributor and best selling author.

  Now there are those who say, “Well blacks commit more crime!” We don’t. We can’t! We don’t have the numbers for that (read minority). But we are indeed investigated, stopped, detained, patrolled and arrested more. All that contact with cops makes us get shot more. Also drugs are MORE illegal in black neighborhoods. This is born out through studies that show blacks actually use drugs less than white people but are more likely to be arrested for having them. The least like person in America to use illicit drugs is the black woman. This because of the sense of occupation and impending capture in black neighborhoods.

  All my like I’ve heard the excuse “we commit more crimes”. How does that help me when I am pulled over and not allowed to show proof of insurance, yet I’m given a ticket for having no insurance? He told me that if I had insurance I cold show it to the clerk. This happened to me. That cost me a couple of lunch hours because when I went that day and the next, his ticket hadn’t shown up yet. But what if he had shot me? I’ve had cops try to run me over with their squad cars as a youth. You have to stand there like a fool and trust them to stop before they kill you. If you run, you’re arrested for whatever they’re looking for. I’ve asked directions and had cops scream at me while unfastening their gun, saying over and over, “What? What? What?!!!”

  So when I’m dead, the cop finds out that I’m Just Jeff. Never been arrested. Never been drunk. Never been high. Father of two, married for 23 years to his kindergarten sweetheart. Wrote non-fiction and science fiction. Won a few contests here and there for programming and animation. That’s when he reaches under his seat for his throw down gun. It becomes my gun. He was afraid I’d shoot him. That’s why I’m dead. Happens all the time, even in Iraq. It happened to a black TV newsman in Detroit, right in front of his family.

  Here in Shreveport, answering a domestic dispute, the cops arrested an entire family reunion for trying to let them know that the woman being assaulted was in house A and not house B.

  Here is where it gets interesting regarding Hamas vs Innocents:

  On the black radio stations, you heard the whole story, that one after one, the family across the street was trying to let the cops know that the woman they were trying to save was in a different house and the cops, instead of seeing helpful concerned citizens, saw dangerous savages and arrested them for continuing to approach them with ever increasing urgency.

  As far as ALL OF THE WHITE PEOPLE IN SHREVEPORT were concerned, there was a riot in a black neighborhood. Why? Because that’s how the cops justified the mass arrest of a family reunion, including great grand ma from California.

  As I drove to work that day, I flipped from one station to the next, and I got the distinct impression that the mainstream media didn’t give a shit what happened. It didn’t matter. It was “black people bidniss.” The only witness interviews were on the black music radio channels, who, for that day, were the only news of what happened. Of course now, with all the automated stations, even that’s impossible now.

  You understand the concept of media bias, but don’t underestimate the same positive spin (those crazy black people rioted but somehow harmed none of us and broke nothing) that came from Shreveport Police. This same spin comes from Israel (Every Palestinian killed was a human shield and we had no scalpels)

  I’ve seen this all my life. Bullets embedded in the pavement, exiting the front of the body. “He was attacking me.”

  It seemed perfectly clear to black people that the man was executed, but to everyone else in the mainstream media, the cop was “afraid” and “had a split second to decide what to do.”

  I think that most people forgot that before the riots in 1992, The cops were acquitted for what they did because they showed the jury found three frames where Rodney King stood up in the middle of being beaten. Of course he fell right back down, but they showed the freeze frame of him with his arms outstretched, and even though the jury had previously seen him fall down at regular speed, they were convinced later that these three frames, these 3/30ths of a second, were an attack. “Look! his arms are outstretched!” Their actual claim was that “He was charging like a linebacker.”

  Why does it resonate we me so much? Well, I’m not only a black guy, I’m a big black guy who can bench press 310 pounds not once, but 30 times in three sets. They claimed Rodney King was a big guy and that was why they were afraid of him. That was a lie. Rodney was actually quite skinny. I’m the big one. I get stopped now only about once a year because I look middle aged, but when they order me out of the car I fear that they fear me, and I fear that no matter the circumstances or evidence to the contrary, it will be my fault when I’m laying there dead and they claim that the only way to control me was with bullets.

  I’m sick of hearing “We’re afraid!” “We’re afraid” is just an excuse to break the law. Same thing for self defense.

  Look at how Bush has used fear and self defense to get away with crimes!

  My God, I’m sick of seeing hypocrisy on my side! I know it will be hard, but just like we’ve got to be better than Bush, we got to be better than Hamas.

  Now, what about blowing up essentially multiple houses as collective punishment for one bomber or terrorist? If you don’t accept that on average more than one house falls, fine. Shouldn’t there be an inquiry as to whether anyone in the house was involved before their property is destroyed. I know that living in America as a lawyer, you are familiar with due process, coming before search and seizure? And if the family was involved, shouldn’t they be arrested?

  When Yitzhak Rabin was recently assassinated by by Yigal Amir, a radical right-wing Orthodox Jew, was his family’s home blown up? WOuld anyone even thoink of such a thing?

  I say that it is a violation of Israel law NOT to blow up the Israeli home of Yigal Amir. Why do you think that home wasn’t blown up? What legal reason?

• Mark January 18, 2009 6:57 pm

  

  Jeff,

  This video was in reponse to a video played that shows some Israeli supporters saying to “wipe Hamas out.” Note that they NEVER said kill all Arabs or kill all Gazans. Yet, this upset some people who thought these Israel supporters were awful awful people.

  Yet the idea of a second Holocaust (“Get back into ovens”) with Iranian nukes just brings silence. No one condemns it. It’s a double standard. Israeli supporters who want to stop terrorists are considered equivalent to Hamas supporters who want genocide.

  Martin Luther King had every reason to call for the “genocide of American white people” who caused far far more harm, death, and destruction to African-Americans and Native Americans that anyone in Israel has ever thought about. But MLK called for non-violent resistance. And in doing so, he changed the course of history.

  Arabs have tried genocidal violence for at leat 80 years. How about, just once, attempting non-violence? They would be SHOCKED to find out how quickly they’d have another Palestinian State.

  (Incidentally, every Lebanese person I know blames Hezbollah and Iran and Syria for the dismemberment of their country and wishes Israel had been allowed by the rest of the world to free their country from Iranian/Syrian occupation. (But I’ll grant you. They’re almost all Christians who’ve suffered from Muslim persecution.))

  I wish scalpels worked.

  Israel has now declared a cease-fire. It has won a victory and forced Hamas to stop shooting bombs at Israeli citizens. But I fear that Hamas won’t honor the cease-fire and will begin shooting again.

  If you were in the Israeli Government and Hamas started shooting again even after Israeli unilaterally stopped fighting, what would you do?

  How would you protect YOUR citizens?

  And why is that NONE of those that heavily criticize Israel EVER answer this question?

  I’ve asked it dozens of times. No one ever says what Israel should do?

  So I’ll ask you Jeff, and beg you to answer it: if you were in charge of the Israeli Government, what would YOU do?

  1) Do nothing and allow your citizens to die?

  2) Do something. If so, what?

  I remind you that the ONLY way Israel managed to stop the bombs in the first place was by military action. Was there any other way? Can you name it?

• Jeff January 18, 2009 2:57 pm

  

  Mark, I know you support Israel, as do I, but your arguments are so absolutely supportive as to make them into a joke. The notion that Jewish Israelis don’t want Gazan citizens to suffer is belied by the fact that 1000 more Gazans are dead right now, and the foreign press is barred from covering the true carnage. It’s belied by the fact that before the invasion, the Gazans were already under the thumb of Israel.

  You keep coming back faithfully to the horrible elitist position that: “If only THIS group of bad people didn’t provoke Israel, Israel wouldn’t be harming THAT group. But THIS group is so bad that THAT group must suffer in total because as we kill many of THAT group — as countless hundreds of thousands, indeed over a million suffer — SOME of THIS group might be among the dead. Just to make sure, we’ll count every adult male killed in Gaza as part of THIS group.”

  The pro-Palestinian rally in Ft. Lauderdale is what you’d expect at such a rally. SOME people will say things like that. I personally know three Catholic families with extended family in Lebanon. These people lost family because of Israeli agression.

  My direct Supervisor is Lebanese. She is the most civilized woman on earth, but part of her family is dead because one or two Israeli soldiers were captured. People she will never speak to or receive text from again. No one, I repeat NO ONE in her family captured those soldiers! And no non-military “target” should have died because of it.

  I have never heard her trash Israel but if she were to say, “I hate Israel” or “I hope they nuke them all,” what am I supposed to say? Pam, your cousins and Aunt’s deaths were justified because some fellow citizens captured a couple of Israeli soldiers and that made all Lebanese into targets?”

  Where else in the world do these rules apply?

  As it goes, I have debated all sorts of politics with her. She is more to the right than I am, but she has never EVER mentioned Israel. But I know how she feels about Lebanon because she mentions Lebanon and Lebanese song and cuisine all the time.

  Does it make her into a “good little Arab” because she keeps her mouth shut about the people who killed her family? If she cries and says, “I hate the people who killed my family” does that make her into a bad little Arab?

  People in her extended family are DEAD because some soldiers were most like on the wrong side of the border. I can’t see the Lebanese getting on the other side and back over without getting killed.

  Nuke Israel? With what? These are just words! What about the commands from Israeli commanders that literally say that innocents between your tanks and the target are inconsequential? It’s out of our hands. Hamas provoked us and just because we can project SOME Hamas dead among the greater civilian dead, we are justified.

  This is villainous activity. If it happened anywhere else. Even if it happened in a comic book and Superman decided to kill all 2200 villains, but had to kill 22,000 civilians to do it, people would understand that at some point, not matter how much other “good stuff” Superman does such as your beloved act of dropping leaflets, Superman at some time became a villain.

  Israel has become villainous. It can easily be redeemed once those in command are arrested and tried and executed for war crimes along with Bush. Israel will be redeemed when it collectively says: “Oh! We should target only the bad guys? The end really DOESN”T justify the means? It really DOES matter when innocent people die or we destroy their homes? The Illegality of taking land through war applies to OUR country? Collective punishment is a concept that applies to Palestinians? People really do get pissed off when you kill half their family and make life a living hell for those left alive? Now I get it!”

  The same rules that we say we want to apply to Bush apply to all leaders, even Israeli, no matter how scared Israel is. Fear is no excuse for premeditated murder or unneeded war.

  I don’t know why you just don’t get this, Mark: No one would complain about Israel if Israel used a scalpel. Israel uses white phosphorus instead of a scalpel. Example after example of innocent lives lost is presented over and over, but you keep that stiff upper lip going, looking only toward that omelette. All those broken eggs aren’t propaganda. I know some of it is faked, but you have developed a finely honed ability to dismiss THEIR dead while justifying ANY Israeli action.

  Honestly, I have heard so many people say what I’ve heard you say here more and more: “Israel is being so freaking nice to Palestine. We love them and care for them. What other country holds back this much? What other country is so giving and peaceful? What other helps little old ladies step over our barbed wire and cross the street even as we blow up her home with the concussion wave from the school we just demolished a mile down the road?

  And if you respond to anything in this post, what about that? When a Palestinian home is blown up (collective punishment) because a suicide bomber or terrorist grew up there, TYPICALLY the homes next door fall also. Does even that mater at all? One Palestinian (if identified properly) commits a crime and three Palestinian families lose their homes.

  Can you even conceive of collective punishment as it applies to Palestinians? Because THAT is what the world is outrages about.

• Mark January 16, 2009 9:39 am

  

  In a notoriously rambunctious democracy, an astounding 94% of Israeli Jews support the Gaza operation, with little sympathy for Gaza, a country that is “committing suicide.”

  Here’s why:
  http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231950868109&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

  Israeli Jews do not want Gazan civilians to suffer. But when Gazans choose to make their own families suffer in the vain hope of annihilating Israel, Israelis feel Gazans are the architects of their own misfortune. Israel ended the occupation in good faith. And much of Gaza cared more about killing Jews than about loving their own families.

  (In Israel, they build bomb shelters for citizens to go underground and avoid Hamas bombardment. In Gaza, it’s Hamas that goes underground while placing Gazan children aboveground, as a “protective shiled” for Hamas’ personnel, bombs, shrapnel, booby-traps, and arms depots.) Israel wants as few dead civilians as possible. That’s why Israel warns its citizens and Gaza civilians of impending attacks. Hamas wants as many dead civilians as possible. It issues no warnings to Israelis or to Gazans. And sadly, it is Hamas–not Israel–that is in charge of Gaza right now. Why does the world want to keep it that way? Why does the world want to keep Gazan civilians in perpetual misery?

  Clearly Hamas wants as many Gaza civilians to die as possible to win a “propaganda victory.” Sadly, it appears that many Arabs feel the same way. They prefer martyrdom over peace. Revenge over a Palestinian State. Death over life.

  No wonder the West Bank Palestinians have so little sympathy for Gaza either. They suffer no violence because they cause no violence. But sadly they don’t have a state because their Gaza brethren have shown Israel that a full withdrawal from the territories only leads to far more violence, death, and destruction.