Israel Should Stop the War and Let US Enjoy the Inauguration;
Cease fire Mooted;
55 Palestinians Killed Friday, including Little Girls
There are rumors that the Israeli government may declare a unilateral cease fire Saturday. They had better. Because if they ruin the Obama inauguration by splashing the bloody bodies of dead Palestinian children all over the press during the next few days, no Americans, even the most pro-Israeli, are going to forgive them. The war has left 1,140 Palestinians dead, over 300 children, and over 5,000 wounded including many women and children, as well as 13 Israelis (4 of them civilians killed by rocket fire). We pay for these wars, we provide the fighter jets, bombs, and tanks. And we don't want our money used for this sanguinary purpose in the first place; we have enough to be guilty about all on our own. And we especially don't want to hear a peep from over there while we swear in our first African-American president.
On Friday, tens of thousands of Egyptians protested the continued war on Gaza. Crowds in Baghdad gathered to donate humanitarian aid to Gaza. There were demonstrations, as well, in a number of other countries.
Cont'd (click below or on "comments")
Wholesale food distributors in Jordan, the UK and the Scandinavian countries are quietly imposing an informal boycott on Israeli fruit, according to Ynetnews, in response to the war on Gaza. My guess is that if the Apartheid situation in the Occupied Territories becomes formalized, such boycotts will spread.
Israel pursued its attacks on Friday and on Saturday morning, killing 55 Palestinians, including a houseful of girls, daughters and a niece of a physician working in Israel who was being interviewed on Israeli television when the news reached him. AFP writes:' At least 55 Palestinians were killed on Friday, including at least 10 people who died when a tank shell slammed into their house in Gaza City during a funeral wake, according to Palestinian medics . . . In the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the territory, three daughters and a niece of a Palestinian doctor working in Israel were killed in an Israeli air strike. "They were girls, only girls. I want to know why they have they killed them. Who gave the order to fire?" the children's sobbing father Ezzedine Abu Eish said on Israeli television. Palestinian militants meanwhile fired over 20 rockets and mortar rounds into southern Israel on Friday, wounding five people, the Israeli military said. Over 700 such projectiles have been fired since the start of the war.'
The father of the dead little girls, Dr. Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish, appears to have been a sort of an Arab "Dr. Sanjay Gupta" who came on Israeli television frequently. He was about to do an interview on Israeli television when the word reached him of the atrocity against his family. His wife had earlier died of cancer, so his children were all he had left. He commuted to Tel Aviv from Gaza and told the girls to sleep near the stone walls to stay safe in his absence.
The Israeli anchors put his anguished lamentations on the air for over 3 minutes, which I take to be their own little protest against Olmert's Butcher Shop. The physician is heard repeatedly crying out, "Ya Rabb, ya Allah" (O Lord, O God!) as the image of the mangles small bodies invades his mind.
Hamas leaders left Gaza for Cairo to nail down an Egyptian peace proposal. Note that Israel is essentially negotiating with Hamas, if only via intermediaries.
Aljazeera English also reports on the aftermath of Israeli strikes on another civilian neighborhood.
UK Member of Parliament Gerald Kaufman's eloquent denunciation of the Olmert government for war crimes is now available at YouTube:
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/17/2009 12:51:00 AM
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24 Comments:
I understand what you're trying to say professor, but the tone of this post is really cold.
As an American, I think the killing of women and children is just as objectionable on Saturday as is it will be on Tuesday, inauguration or not. The Israelis should stop killing for the sake of the Palestinians and the Israelis (as you've pointed out elsewhere). Saying the Israelis should stop killing because we're swearing in a new president just seems narcissistic.
-- mc
Qatar called for an urgent Arab summit to deal with the assault on the Gazans. The Saudis, Egyptians, and PA president Abbas refused to go. But the meeting still went ahead, with 7 Damascus-based palestenian resistance groups airlifted to take the place of Abbas. Iran, Venezuela, and other non-Arabs also attended.
The remarkable thing about this is that Qatar hosts an Israeli trade office (which is now closed) and a massive US air-base.
Syria asked for the 2002 Arab Peace initiative to be put to rest. They argued that Israel has killed the initiative and it is now time to bury it.
The Israelis (people and government) have been assaulting defenseless Arabs, murdering over a thousand and causing billions in damages, as part of their election proceedings. They have gone unpunished because the US and its Arab agents have supported them. This time it looks very much that it will be different.
Ceasefire now? Isn't it likely that this was the plan all along -- to tuck in a trademark collective-punishment attack while it was still comfortably possible? The inauguration would then serve as a convenient memory wipe: in a week, no one but specialists will remember and the standard media will have moved on to something else. Who thinks much about Lebanon these days, or even post-surge Iraq?
It was said that the attack was 6 months in the planning. It's safe to assume that the timing, and not just the targeting, was part of the plan.
Juan, it seems to me they put the Doctor on air because that's just the way it happened. He was about to talk to them anyway. In any case, for Israelis, it is just further evidence of Hamas atrocities. In their logic, Hamas caused it, by firing rockets. Yes. This is how they see things. --Stephen
They may be psychopaths, but they are our psychopaths!
"splashing the bloody bodies of dead Palestinian children all over the press during the next few days, no Americans, even the most pro-Israeli, are going to forgive them."
More broadly, the Israelis will have to be careful about jerking Obama around. If they do not, American liberals may feel that they are being forced to make a choice between Israel and an era of progressive change. It will be concluded that Israel is simply not worth it anymore, and that they should chart their own course.
I challenge you, Juan. Are you going to hold Obama's feet to the fire if he doesn't change US mideast policy for the better?
"The war has left 1,140 Palestinians dead, over 300 children, and over 5,000 wounded including many women and children"
Where are the civilians here? Do you mean by the classification "women and children"? that there are no civilians in Gaza and what age group consitutes "children"? Does this mean that anyone not classified as "women and children" is automatically Hamas and therefore, in the lingo of Israel and the US, a terrorist.
I see that Israel has civilians "13 Israelis (4 of them civilians" but not the Palestinians. Are they different because they are Palestinian and live in Gaza?
The idea that Barack Obama coronation should matter beyond the massacre of Palestinians, beyond the decimation of Gaza is horrid. No matter what Israel may do, it is too late for Israel to be redeemed and too late for Obama or Biden or Clinton or the Democratic leadership to be redeemed for the terrorizing in Gaza.
Israel has behaved as a terrorist state, and there was only Democratic support. Democratic leaders were too morally corrupt to even ask for a ceasefire.
The butcher shop is not Olmert's but all the Israeli government's and beyond. Israelis so often reveled in the butchery. There are pcitures of Israelis watching the smashing of Gaza from hills, happily on picnics.
The timing for this war is all about Obama. He might not have supplied the weapons but his public silence will be seen for what it is. It is also Bush's last hurrah - his parting gesture and Condi's final stab into the heart of the Palestinians. Israel has demonstrated a calculated viciousness and barbarity of biblical proportions.
These Israeli attacks will ensure a new generation of anti-American and anti-Israeli resistance.
Perhaps a not unintended consequence will be reaction and counter-reaction in order to justify the expulsion of the remaining Palestinians from Israel.
These are very grave times indeed.
"...if they ruin the Obama inauguration... no Americans, even the most pro-Israeli, are going to forgive them."
I have no idea what has led you to connect these elements together, professor. I cannot see how 1) carnage in the middle east causes much of a stir, most of the time, anyway, 2) such carnage has even a chance of drawing attention during the inauguration, or 3) why anyone, least of all pro-Israel hardliners, would (or should) suddenly decide that support for Israel must be reversed solely because inauguration festivities were (let's assume, for the sake of argument) spoiled.
You've left me baffled.
"no Americans, even the most pro-Israeli, are going to forgive them"
I agree with you regarding Israel's brutality, but the above statement is delusional. Take the NYT--yesterday they showed their outrage by stating that the Israeli assault on Gaza might be reaching the point of diminishing returns. Today they print a front page story which is essentially a lawyer's defense against the charge that Israel might have committed war crimes. And this is the "liberal" NYT, often criticized by self-styled defenders of Israel for its anti-Israel bias.
Donald
Someone who loves Judaism speaking the truth. I humbly thank him for his sanity and humanity
"Because if they ruin the Obama inauguration by splashing the bloody bodies of dead Palestinian children all over the press during the next few days, no Americans, even the most pro-Israeli, are going to forgive them."
What news are you watching that you are seeing the dead bodies of Palestinian children? I have not seen any coverage of Gaza all week, other than on the internet. Just like I have not seen the investigative reporting the British news has done on whether the rockets during the ceasefire were Hamas or Islamic Jihad, ect.... Nor, that the cross boarder raid by Israel constituted an offense of the ceasefire as well. What I see in the USA news outlets is what Israel wanted: no to little coverage. And, certainly none could pass for analytical, like if the goal was to cripple Hamas, why with the assassination of 3 major ministers, including the one in charge of the brigades firing the rockets, did they not yet stop.
And, since the tunnels under Rafah are used primarily for goods, medicines, and fuel, limited by the Israeli embargo, does not the new agreement signed by the Bush administration formalize the USA role as an instrument of the occupation and suppression of Palestinians. Which has been mostly figurative because of our arms sales. And, can this agreement just serve to assure that Palestinians are starved into submission through the ancient tactics of used to assail closed cities.
I appreciate sarcasm. It is often a nice way to make a point.
It will be interesting how it plays out.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/world/middleeast/18mideast.html
January 18, 2009
Israel Criticized for New Deaths as Cease-Fire Looms in Gaza
By STEVEN ERLANGER
Israeli tank fire killed two young brothers sheltering at a United Nations school even as Israel prepared to declare a unilateral cease-fire in Gaza.
[Who cares about the coronation of Obama, when Obama has shown no concern at all for Gaza?]
"Israel should stop the war and let us enjoy the inauguration"
The language used here seems grossly inappropriate, and the idea is flawed too. The bombing should not happen. Full stop. It has nothing to do with ceremonies that Americans want to "enjoy". And I doubt that hard-line Israel supporters in the United States would be so concerned about the killings in Palestine "spoiling" the inauguration.
In this, I concur with the views of other commentators above.
By the way, I must add that overall your coverage of the middle east has been excellent, and your opinion pieces spot on, so I was a little disappointed by this headline.
I sure was nice to see the press at last show their fangs and sink then into Zippy Livni at yesterday's news conference broadcast by CSPAN. Her fast talk did her no good and exposed her as a liar.
But just what is in this 11th-hour security memorandum she signed with Rice? Indeed, it does appear to be a wink and a nod at occupation and suppression.
innocent chilren and women and MEN. WELL It is all politics of 21th century based of 20th century mentality. Off course Israel has an election coming up so they use the gaza holocust for their election purpose; while BUSH is sipping his coffee in the white house and did he care?; I read somewhere that he received a call from israel president and then It reminded me of his natural reaction when he heard of 9/11 news. same reaction;none. So I would definetly hope that Obama would have more spine to do what is right. NEWS what NEWS I only get my news from bbc or cnn only on internet. I dont even see any mention of this on abc or any major network. It really shows the new era of cencership. who said we humans are sane group of species anyways. we killed millions in 20th century and we will keep on killing, torturing, in the name of national pride,ideologies or religious belifs.
The Euronews channel (784 on Dish TV) shows the new kind of tourism - Jews from Israel and Norway sitting loughing on the border to Gaza and watching the bombing - not a nice picture
I agree with you. I am an American Jew who is sick at heart because of the brutality and the idiocy (this will not help them politically or militarily) of the Israeli government. Hamas is morally corrupt as well, but that is no justification for the havoc being wreaked upon Gaza.
http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/farewellangelina.html
1965
Farewell Angelina
By Bob Dylan
King Kong, little elves
On the rooftoops they dance
Valentino-type tangos
While the make-up man's hands
Shut the eyes of the dead
Not to embarrass anyone
Farewell Angelina
The sky is embarrassed
And I must be gone.
The machine guns are roaring
The puppets heave rocks
The fiends nail time bombs
To the hands of the clocks
Call me any name you like
I will never deny it
Farewell Angelina
The sky is erupting
I must go where it's quiet.
This is a holocaust being perpetrated on a captive population by the very same people who touted "Never Again".
They are throwing Phosphorus onto crowed refugee camps. This is not war. In war both sides of the conflict are armed. Bush himself even said that the "Rocket Launchers" they are using in Gaza are too large to fit into those tunnels.
They are bombing any aid that might make it to the people. These include the UN efforts and the Red Cross.
The weapons used today are so precise, so efficient, there is no way they can say, and “it went off course".
America, how shamefully naive we are to think that we could go into Persia, create allies and win the day.
There is only one in history who was able to complete that destiny. That is why he is called "Great".
Those people have been warring for Centuries. And we in our arrogance, thought we could control, Israel, Iran, Iraq.
We stuck our big noses in where they didn't belong and I’m afraid this is just the beginning.
I think that the "Christians" might get their Armageddon after all. By creating it.
And I agree with the first comment. Gazans are dying, all day, every day. It does not matter one bit that America is crowing, oops...electing a new president.
These war crimes are crimes. Plain and simple.
I hope to hear the lock hit the floor when the doors of Nuremberg are reopened.
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