Tag Archives: Israel/Palestine

Jew stabs Jew, Arab stabs Arab

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Palestinian girls stab Arab man, 70, in Jerusalem terror attack

Two Arab female teens identified as attackers were shot after slashing at people near the busy outdoor market with scissors, according to police.

One victim was identified as a 70-year-old Palestinian resident of Bethlehem with stab wounds to his upper body.

My advice for Israel’s survival

This came after a long and exhausting argument with Israel supporters in which I refused to accept Palestinians don’t exist.

Gentelmen, it’s been fun. Thank you for the engagement. I have work to do, and I need to leave this alternate reality into which you are doggedly trying to drag me.

I’ve written this before, but here’s my advice for Israel’s survival:

1) Face your history. Stop the double-talk, lies, distortions, overloading, reframing. You need to do it.

2) You are now a landed people. Develop Duty, Honor, Sacrifice because those are the ethics that allow you to defend yourself. You have it. But punish (or as a bare minimum, stop subsidizing) the parts of your society which parasite on the sacrific of others.

3) Declare your goddamn borders. Israel is the only country without declared borders. This, plus the thousands [this may be an exaggeration] of statements by Israeli leaders encouraging ethnic cleansing is the reason so many people (me) remain suspicious of Israel’s intentions — see the graphic at the top of the conversation.

(Defend your borders both against the Arabs and against the parts of your society who publically advocate expansion to the Euphrates river.)

4) Ween yourself off direct western subsity. It creates resentment and puts at risk the political support which is very important to Israel.

5) Make peace with your neighbors.

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Some excerpts:

>You can blame Israel, hate Israel, explain that Arabs don’t really want to destroy Israel, etc. All that would be very noble. But seriously expect a suicide of the whole nation? — It’s not noble, it’s stupid smile emoticon

> I had no doubts that my refusal to deny the existence of Palestinians would very quickly be interpreted as “so you want to destroy Israel.”

It happens almost every time.

>Show us something which demonstrates that a palestinian arab nation existed before 1947.

>This is a great slight of hand. You’re pretending that I’m talking about modest claims to property claims. I’m talking about this:

“We must expel Arabs and take their places.”
— David Ben Gurion, 1937

[He came back by stating it’s a fake quote. I don’t have the time to check (perhaps that was his goal) but it doesn’t seem fake. It is cited down to a page number, and consistent with dozens of other quotes for Ben Gurion and other Israeli leaders.]

>This was Gaza after WW1 , occupied by the british troops, as you can see few houses , a small village, that’s it. Now they are 2 millions…..

>You are presenting a single photograph of a town and concluding from it that Gaza was uninhabited?

What the hell is wrong with you???

First of all, it’s a town. It looks like a normal town and in no way indicates an absence of people.

Second of all, if it did indicated an absence of people, it’s one damn photograph. It is another enormous sweep of dishonesty to extrapolate from one photo a statement about an entire region.

The Haredi in Israel

If you want to hold land, you need to solve the prisoner’s dilemma problem faced by soldiers — namely problem of each individual soldier’s life being best if everybody EXCEPT him, does his job. Cultures usually solve the prisoner’s dilemma with elaborate ideas of duty, honor, selflessness and sacrifice, plus the punishment of those who violate these ideals.

I don’t know whether or not the cost of defense has gotten cheaper, or if it only seems that way. In any case, this video about Haredis in Israel is a good case study. Israel needs to hold land.

Jerusalem Post confirms Israel knew USS Liberty was American

A 2004 transcript of an Israeli military tape published in the Jerusalem Post supports the unanimous position of the survivors and many high-ranking US officers that Israeli forces knew the USS Liberty was an American ship, as they attempted to sink it.

The Liberty was the only ship of its kind at the time, easily distinguishable for the huge satellite dishes mounted on its deck and the bristling array of antennae which served as the spy ship’s “ears.”

The survivors, and the audio tape on which the transcript is based, are presented in a new documentary which was broadcast on the Al Jazeera America channel last week. The audio tape has never been heard before by an American audience. The film “The Day Israel Attacked America” is directed and produced by British film maker Richard Belfield [mp4 at USS Liberty survivors’ website.]

Israel has long maintained, with official US government inquiries agreeing, that the attack was a case of mistaken identity. However, a growing chorus of critics, and the USS Liberty survivors themselves, say the official reports are cover-ups of an incident in which American sailors were ruthlessly, deliberately attacked in order to draw the US into war with Egypt, by blaming it for the loss of the ship with all hands. Israel was engaged in the Six Day War with Egypt and other Arab states at the time.

The attack, which commenced on June 8th, 1967 at 1:58 p.m. local time with strafing runs by Israeli Mirage jet fighters, lasted for approximately two hours, after seven to nine reconnaissance flights over the Liberty by slow-moving Israeli patrol planes beginning at 5:30 a.m. Liberty survivors are unanimous in their conviction that the attackers knew the ship was American, and that they were trying hard to sink it. Expended over the course of the attack were over 800 rounds of 30mm cannon, air-to-surface rockets, heat-seeking missiles, napalm bombs, and five torpedoes.

In the documentary, during the course of the attack, at 2:14 p.m., 16 minutes after the first strafing run begins, voices of Israeli military controllers are heard to say, as the timeline is counted in the background:

“”To what state does she belong?” (Answer): “American””

Supporting the authenticity of the tape, in 2004 the Jerusalem Post published what it said was a transcript of Israeli military transmissions directing the attack on the USS Liberty. In that transcript, at precisely the same time, 2:14pm, the exchange translated from Hebrew to English is reported:

“”Kislev, what country?” (Answer): “Apparently American.” “