The New York Times - Jan 11, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/opinion/11thu1.html
Lead Editorial:
The Real Disaster
President Bush told Americans last night that failure in Iraq would be a disaster. The disaster is Mr. Bush's war, and he has already failed. Last night was his chance to stop offering more fog and be honest with the nation, and he did not take it.
Americans needed to hear a clear plan to extricate United States troops from the disaster that Mr. Bush created. What they got was more gauzy talk of victory in the war on terrorism and of creating a "young democracy" in Iraq. In other words, a way for this president to run out the clock and leave his mess for the next one.
Mr. Bush did acknowledge that some of his previous tactics had failed. But even then, the president sounded as if he were an accidental tourist in Iraq. He described the failure of last year's effort to pacify Baghdad as if the White House and the Pentagon bore no responsibility.
In any case, Mr. Bush's excuses were tragically inadequate. The nation needs an eyes-wide-open recognition that the only goal left is to get the U.S. military out of this civil war in a way that could minimize the slaughter of Iraqis and reduce the chances that the chaos Mr. Bush unleashed will engulf Iraq's neighbors.
What it certainly did not need were more of Mr. Bush's open-ended threats to Iran and Syria.
Before Mr. Bush spoke, Americans knew he planned to send more troops to pacify lawless Baghdad. Mr. Bush's task was to justify that escalation by acknowledging that there was no military solution to this war and outlining the political mission that the military would be serving. We were waiting for him to detail the specific milestones that he would set for the Iraqis, set clear timelines for when they would be expected to meet them, and explain what he intended to do if they again failed.
Instead, he said he had warned the Iraqis that if they didn't come through, they would lose the faith of the American people. Has Mr. Bush really not noticed that the American people long ago lost faith in the Iraqi government - and in him as well? Americans know that this Iraqi government is captive to Shiite militias, with no interest in the unity, reconciliation and democracy that Mr. Bush says he wants.
Mr. Bush said yet again that he wanted the Iraqi government to step up to the task of providing its security, and that Iraq needed a law on the fair distribution of oil money. Iraq's government needs to do a lot more than that, starting with disarming the sectarian militias that are feeding the civil war and purging the police forces that too often are really death squads. It needs to offer amnesty to insurgents and militia fighters willing to put down their weapons. It needs to do those things immediately.
Iraq's Shiite-dominated government has heard this list before. But so long as Mr. Bush is willing to back that failed government indefinitely - enabling is the psychological term - Iraq's leaders will have no reason to move against the militias and more fairly share power with the Sunni minority.
Mr. Bush did announce his plan for 20,000 more troops, and the White House trumpeted a $1 billion contribution to reconstruction efforts. Congress will debate these as if they are the real issues. But they are not. Talk of a "surge" ignores the other 132,000 American troops trapped by a failed strategy.
We have argued that the United States has a moral obligation to stay in Iraq as long as there is a chance to mitigate the damage that a quick withdrawal might cause. We have called for an effort to secure Baghdad, but as part of the sort of comprehensive political solution utterly lacking in Mr. Bush's speech. This war has reached the point that merely prolonging it could make a bad ending even worse. Without a real plan to bring it to a close, there is no point in talking about jobs programs and military offensives. There is nothing ahead but even greater disaster in Iraq.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
*
Steve Hayes
2007-01-12 00:29:12 EST
On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 21:11:43 GMT, "David Morgan \(MAMS\)" <*e@m-a-m-s.comC/Odm> wrote:
>Americans needed to hear a clear plan to extricate United States troops from >the disaster that Mr. Bush created. What they got was more gauzy talk of >victory in the war on terrorism and of creating a "young democracy" in Iraq. >In other words, a way for this president to run out the clock and leave his >mess for the next one.
Does anyone remember what the NY Times said at the time of Bush's greatest folly of all -- the original invasion of Iraq in 2003?
-- Keep well,
Steve Hayes http://people.tribe.net/hayesstw
John
2007-01-12 03:48:23 EST
NY Times wrote:
> "The disaster is Mr. Bush's war, and he has already failed. Last > night was his chance to stop offering more fog and be honest with > the nation, and he did not take it."
--- I must protest this point. While I'm no fan of the war and never have been, I don't think it's fair to make Bush the scapegoat. The Senate and House--Democrats and Republicans--supported the war. They could have stopped it before it started, but were afraid to.
Why were they afraid? Because they believed the American public wanted it, and they didn't want to risk their jobs by doing something unpopular--like taking a moral stand.
Why did they believe Americans wanted the war? Because not enough Americans spoke out against it.
Therefore much or most of the fault the American public's. And blaming Bush (however much he may deserve it) is further failure of the American public to own up to its responsibility.
Regardless of what happens in Iraq, we must come to grips with with a terrible cycle that characterizes citizens and political leaders--a pattern we can see even as far back as ancient Rome: the collective "shadow" of the masses seeks expression (here that means millions of oil-greedy and materialistic Americans wanted to "secure America's interests" in Iraq, and perhaps, more darkly still, sought an outlet for their collective wrath.) To this end, they first elected a hawkish president, as though in anticipation. Then they encouraged, by silence if by no other means, his actions. And then, after wreaking havoc in Iraq, they now seek to cleanse their guilt by making a scapegoat of Bush.
Reject his plan and get us out of Iraq, if that's what conscience and common sense dictate. But stop demonizing Bush. That's the same kind of irrational and emotion-based thinking that produced the problem.
Let those with eyes see.
-- John Uebersax PhD http://satyagraha.wordpress.com
Fusion
2007-01-12 16:41:42 EST
in my humble opinion and pardon my ignorant grammar, 1) this op-ed http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/opinion/11thu1.html in the NYT where the Sulzberger-Safire-Keller-Rosenthal-Abramson etal , the ultra neocon Mossad team that controls the oped pages of the NYT (many of the great writers on the paper are a totally different story) spins its lies is really amazingly cruel, considering that in early 2002 and 2003, they were pushing Bush and the Administration to attack Iraq and start the occupation repeatedly with the excuse that it was a fact that there were WMD in Iraq ,and nuclear materials,centrifuges tubes and rockets ready to spread bio-weapons over the USA and on and on, that was the same op-ed page asking Bush what he was waiting for to attack Saddam, to start bombing, to stop the iraqi nuclear and bio-poison bombs from landing in the USA, so these same neocons pushing Bush to war now call him a fool? a failure? what about them? what about their lies and phony patriotic screams? when are these criminal Mossad and members of the Army of Israel face the responsabilities of 3.000 dead soldiers, 25.000 disabled and 250.000 iraqi civilians dead? when are they going to pay for the intentional global disaster? we need to get Satan's adress from them and send them the human and blood bill !
2) and to see yesterday Senator Boxer attacking Sec. Rice,who may have made mistakes , but it was Senator Boxer,S.Schumer and R.Israel standing in front of the cameras with a shoulder rocket launcher demanding to install a "Laser system-ID-beacon" on every commercial airplane in the USA and EU to deflect rockets and which was manufactured by an israeli firm, the same group of israelis that had stolen all the Laser Gun, CPU ,Radio and Radar technology from the New Mexico - Nevada Pentagon laboratories,testing grounds and all the USA Research Centers-Universities working for the Gov. on these Technologies, while their neocon friends,Berger,Summers,Cohen, Emanuel,Gorelick,etc. run the White House and other Dpt.'s in the Clinton Administration and in the HQ of Intel, where chairman Grove convinced the Board to open the most advanced CPU factory in Israel at a cost of 5 billion dollars instead of renovating the old Intel plants in Chandler Arizona and Oregon so they could take all the 64-bit circuits, WiMax(Alvarion,etc.) and other smart radios patents, these"phony patriots" were pushing stolen goods by an israeli team to the USA and EU Governments to control commercial aviation passengers ,cargo and personal and corporate info,control all ! , so the attacks of S.Boxer to S.Rice are absurd, Senator Boxer should put her real Israeli Army-Mossad uniform and try to fix that country's theft of land and lives, that would be real, but her attacks to anybody in the USA Gov. are obscene and High Treason , one day all the thefts by these neocons of USA technology must be paid back, one day ! in the meantime, lets be fair !
3) to hear some like Congresswoman Wilson on http://www.c-span.org/ yesterday :"...I don't think the presence of contractors in Iraq has affected our policies, our efficiency.... contractors make things a little bit different,but i don't see any impact in our strategy...." the Congress woman thinks that 25.000 armed security contractors ( and another 60.000 loose armed operators) have no impact on Iraq's war !!! in my humble opinion, she is totally criminally incompetent , totally incompetent or we must find out her bank accounts changes from the time she started working for the Congress and today, it's absurd to try to defend all the contractors all the time, and if she is not getting anything from the contractors , she will be more than happy to show us her income sources, right, Congresswoman ? to have people like her in the United States Congress is an insult, lets hope all the great woman of the land take notice, run for office and make sure the "political garbage" is taken out every night before closing, we need the smart honest USA ladies in action, can't get any worst then this.
4) right after this, as usual, any caller to http://www.c-span.org/ in the 7 to 10 a.m. EST program, FM 90 to 94 on radio or Internet , any caller asking about mercenaries and private security bodyguards and other armed operators in Iraq and Afghanistan gets shut-off, they don't let anyone ask any questions about these issues, and c-span.org/ is the Taxpayers outlet,its not the neocon hosts and editors private joint , it's the USA and the worlds speaker phone , not the Mossad's, so would the USA Congress PLEASE get c-span.org/ ,npr.org/ radio and PBS-TV back to the People ?
5) since we are there, dear president Bush, and the mess is big, in my opinion we need to make a present to the Iraqi people( besides leaving soon) from the USA people to the Iraqi people, we must make sure PROVINCIAL ELECTIONS HAPPEN SOON, OIL LAW IS PASSED AND ACTIVE SOON, AND THE OIL PROFITS ARE SPLIT TO ALL IRAQIS, so can we offer them "secure-paper-trail-source-code-voting-machines" as a gift from the American people? the best welding America can offer for their pipes? computers and servers and microwaves to control every drop of oil/gas and income? as a gift to the iraqis? dear Prez., its time for a good gift,a detail, something to show that we mean well,honest, fair, and even, video-conference portable units for their great open street markets to share sheep prices or dates or olives or pickup trucks or generators or water desalination units? a great gift is in order, remembering that the neocons will try to bomb one to attack the other and the iranians,so for once lets do the good stuff! a great gift ! ( ....and maybe i can go with Paris Hilton to visit the troops? no, seriously we need a great gift for the iraqi people ! , we need a new dynamic and tone ! )
in the Foggo-Goss-Cunningham-etc. Investigation, we must remember that it was S.Lieberman and S.Schumer, R.Harman and S.Coleman, among other neocons pushing for the Senate to approve Goss as CIA Director, why ? these same neocons pushed the Senate to approve Chertoff and Bodman, the 2 biggest disasters in recent USA History, and they are not even finish, Chertoff is facilitating an Iranian Hit and Bodman a Nuclear Affair and all to blame it on the iranians and the Prez., so why these people are still in power and their boss is the one being called incompetent? dear Prez., SET YOURSELF FREE TODAY !
Frank Arthur
2007-01-12 17:11:29 EST
Con"fusion"- here is a multiple collection of conspracy theories back to back. Includes Mossads attacks on Iran and connection to Satan!
"fusion" <practical1@openmail.cc> wrote in message news:1168638102.419562.163550@a75g2000cwd.googlegroups.com... > in my humble opinion and pardon my ignorant grammar, 1) this op-ed > http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/opinion/11thu1.html in the NYT > where the Sulzberger-Safire-Keller-Rosenthal-Abramson etal , the ultra > neocon Mossad team that controls the oped pages of the NYT (many of the > great writers on the paper are a totally different story) spins its > lies is really amazingly cruel, considering that in early 2002 and > 2003, they were pushing Bush and the Administration to attack Iraq and > start the occupation repeatedly with the excuse that it was a fact that > there were WMD in Iraq ,and nuclear materials,centrifuges tubes and > rockets ready to spread bio-weapons over the USA and on and on, that > was the same op-ed page asking Bush what he was waiting for to attack > Saddam, to start bombing, to stop the iraqi nuclear and bio-poison > bombs from landing in the USA, so these same neocons pushing Bush to > war now call him a fool? a failure? what about them? what about their > lies and phony patriotic screams? when are these criminal Mossad and > members of the Army of Israel face the responsabilities of 3.000 dead > soldiers, 25.000 disabled and 250.000 iraqi civilians dead? when are > they going to pay for the intentional global disaster? we need to get > Satan's adress from them and send them the human and blood bill ! > > 2) and to see yesterday Senator Boxer attacking Sec. Rice,who may have > made mistakes , but it was Senator Boxer,S.Schumer and R.Israel > standing in front of the cameras with a shoulder rocket launcher > demanding to install a "Laser system-ID-beacon" on every commercial > airplane in the USA and EU to deflect rockets and which was > manufactured by an israeli firm, the same group of israelis that had > stolen all the Laser Gun, CPU ,Radio and Radar technology from the New > Mexico - Nevada Pentagon laboratories,testing grounds and all the USA > Research Centers-Universities working for the Gov. on these > Technologies, while their neocon friends,Berger,Summers,Cohen, > Emanuel,Gorelick,etc. run the White House and other Dpt.'s in the > Clinton Administration and in the HQ of Intel, where chairman Grove > convinced the Board to open the most advanced CPU factory in Israel at > a cost of 5 billion dollars instead of renovating the old Intel plants > in Chandler Arizona and Oregon so they could take all the 64-bit > circuits, WiMax(Alvarion,etc.) and other smart radios patents, > these"phony patriots" were pushing stolen goods by an israeli team to > the USA and EU Governments to control commercial aviation passengers > ,cargo and personal and corporate info,control all ! , so the attacks > of S.Boxer to S.Rice are absurd, Senator Boxer should put her real > Israeli Army-Mossad uniform and try to fix that country's theft of > land and lives, that would be real, but her attacks to anybody in the > USA Gov. are obscene and High Treason , one day all the thefts by > these neocons of USA technology must be paid back, one day ! in the > meantime, lets be fair ! > > 3) to hear some like Congresswoman Wilson on http://www.c-span.org/ > yesterday :"...I don't think the presence of contractors in Iraq has > affected our policies, our efficiency.... contractors make things a > little bit different,but i don't see any impact in our strategy...." > the Congress woman thinks that 25.000 armed security contractors ( and > another 60.000 loose armed operators) have no impact on Iraq's war !!! > in my humble opinion, she is totally criminally incompetent , totally > incompetent or we must find out her bank accounts changes from the time > she started working for the Congress and today, it's absurd to try to > defend all the contractors all the time, and if she is not getting > anything from the contractors , she will be more than happy to show us > her income sources, right, Congresswoman ? to have people like her in > the United States Congress is an insult, lets hope all the great woman > of the land take notice, run for office and make sure the "political > garbage" is taken out every night before closing, we need the smart > honest USA ladies in action, can't get any worst then this. > > 4) right after this, as usual, any caller to http://www.c-span.org/ in > the 7 to 10 a.m. EST program, FM 90 to 94 on radio or Internet , any > caller asking about mercenaries and private security bodyguards and > other armed operators in Iraq and Afghanistan gets shut-off, they don't > let anyone ask any questions about these issues, and c-span.org/ is > the Taxpayers outlet,its not the neocon hosts and editors private joint > , it's the USA and the worlds speaker phone , not the Mossad's, so > would the USA Congress PLEASE get c-span.org/ ,npr.org/ radio and > PBS-TV back to the People ? > > 5) since we are there, dear president Bush, and the mess is big, in my > opinion we need to make a present to the Iraqi people( besides leaving > soon) from the USA people to the Iraqi people, we must make sure > PROVINCIAL ELECTIONS HAPPEN SOON, OIL LAW IS PASSED AND ACTIVE SOON, > AND THE OIL PROFITS ARE SPLIT TO ALL IRAQIS, so can we offer them > "secure-paper-trail-source-code-voting-machines" as a gift from the > American people? the best welding America can offer for their pipes? > computers and servers and microwaves to control every drop of oil/gas > and income? as a gift to the iraqis? dear Prez., its time for a good > gift,a detail, something to show that we mean well,honest, fair, and > even, video-conference portable units for their great open street > markets to share sheep prices or dates or olives or pickup trucks or > generators or water desalination units? a great gift is in order, > remembering that the neocons will try to bomb one to attack the other > and the iranians,so for once lets do the good stuff! a great gift ! ( > ....and maybe i can go with Paris Hilton to visit the troops? no, > seriously we need a great gift for the iraqi people ! , we need a new > dynamic and tone ! ) > > in the Foggo-Goss-Cunningham-etc. Investigation, we must remember that > it was S.Lieberman and S.Schumer, R.Harman and S.Coleman, among other > neocons pushing for the Senate to approve Goss as CIA Director, why ? > these same neocons pushed the Senate to approve Chertoff and Bodman, > the 2 biggest disasters in recent USA History, and they are not even > finish, Chertoff is facilitating an Iranian Hit and Bodman a Nuclear > Affair and all to blame it on the iranians and the Prez., so why these > people are still in power and their boss is the one being called > incompetent? dear Prez., SET YOURSELF FREE TODAY ! >
David Morgan \MAMS\
2007-01-12 17:26:33 EST
"Frank Arthur" <Art@Arthurian.com> wrote in message news:gITph.440$O53.364@bignews6.bellsouth.net...
> Con"fusion"- here is a multiple collection of conspracy theories back to back. > Includes Mossads attacks on Iran and connection to Satan!
Dear dear Frank.... Satan ?!?!? Come now....
Can't you think of anything that's a *little* more original than referring to a man-made creation of population-controlling fear inducement called Satan? A figment of man's worst and darkest imagination?
I'd be more inclined to believe that the UN made a terrible mistake in 1948 than I would to believe in Satan. It does make for a nice description of president Bush, however. ;-)
David Morgan \MAMS\
2007-01-12 17:36:20 EST
"Frank Arthur" <Art@Arthurian.com> wrote in message news:gITph.440$O53.364@bignews6.bellsouth.net...
> Con"fusion"- here is a multiple collection of conspracy theories back to > back. Includes Mossads attacks on Iran and connection to Satan!
Here Frank... This one's for you. I just love giving you news straight from Israeli newpapers just to have to attack ME instead of the subject matter.
DM
Zionist Occupation News - Abunimah - Jan 12, 2007
excerpted from Abunimah News - Jan 12, 2007 http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi/abunimah/
1) Israel fascists reject Arab minister in name of "Jewish purity" (Ha) 2) Jewish state destroys Bedouin village for second time (EI) 3) Two fishermen hurt, one missing after attack by occupiers (Reuters) 4) Genocide in Gaza, Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank (Ilan Pappe/EI)
(1) Lieberman calls on Peretz to quit over appointment of first Arab minister
By Mazal Mualem, Gideon Alon and Yoav Stern
Haaretz - 12 January 2007 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/812447.html
Minister for Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday called on Amir Peretz to resign the defense portfolio over his appointment of Israel's first Arab minister, saying Peretz was unfit to hold the post.
Lieberman said that Peretz had abused his role as defense minister, and used the apparatus of the state for his own ends in the Labor Party primaries, and as such was not worthy of holding the position.
Lieberman's comments followed condemnation of the appointment by the chairman of Knesset faction of his Yisrael Beiteinu party, MK Esterina Tartman, who lambasted the move as "a lethal blow to Zionism."
She told Israel Radio that Labor MK Raleb Majadele's appointment as minister of science and technology damages "Israel's character as a Jewish state."
"We need to destroy this affliction from within ourselves. God willing, God will come to our help," she said.
Tartman's remarks were widely condemned by lawmakers from across the political spectrum. Majadele later said that her comments did not merit a response.
Tartman also said Peretz only made Majadele minister because the MK is an Arab, and to strengthen Peretz's power within Labor.
"Peretz is making a sacrifice of Zionism," she said. "He has crossed all the red lines. Israel is a Jewish state and should be run according to Jewish principles."
Tartman insisted that she did not have anything personal against Majadele, but objected to his appointment in principle.
"This is assimilation," She said. "I call on the prime minister not to approve this appointment, not for personal reasons, but in order to protect the state of Israel's interest as a Jewish and Zionist state."
MK Michael Eitan (Likud) called for a Knesset debate on what he termed Tartman's racist comments.
He said that he "rejected with disgust Tartman's racist pronouncements. The Zionism of Herzl, Jabotinsky and Begin always advocated the integration of Arabs who are loyal to the state in all of its institutions on the basis of equality. Tartman's statements are such that no believer in equality and democracy can accept them being on the agenda."
Labor MKs, including Danny Yatom and Yoram Marciano, called for Peretz to convene party institutions to reconsider Labor's continued participation in the coalition following Tartman's remarks.
Yatom said her comments show that Peretz and the ministers erred in choosing Knesset seats over ideology.
Marciano, head of the Labor faction in the Knesset, called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to oust Yisrael Beiteinu from the coalition, and for Labor to reconsider whether it can "sit in the government with this racist party."
"These remarks are an insult to the Knesset, to democracy and to the state," MK Nadia Hilo (Labor) said. "If they are acceptable to Yisrael Beiteinu, then it should leave the government. Arab citizens did not receive citizenship through the grace of Yisrael Beiteinu."
Meretz Chairman Yossi Beilin called on Labor to condition its participation in the government on the removal of Yisrael Beiteinu.
He added that the racist remarks that Tartman made, an issue which Yisrael Beiteinu should "confront internally," are extremely serious, and urged Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to check whether there is legal justification for opening a criminal investigation over the remarks.
MK Magali Wahaba (Kadima) said, " I regret that there are still people who instead of speaking of cooperation, continue to speak in a racist tone. Such people must be removed from our midst," he said.
***
(2) Israel destroys Negev Bedouin village for second time
Report, Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages 11 January 2007 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6377.shtml
On Tuesday, January 9th, Israeli forces entered the Bedouin village of Twail Abu Jarwal in the Northern Negev for the fifth time, in order to demolish it. Large police forces, with the aid of special-task forces and with the aerial help of a helicopter and two bulldozers, demolished the entire village. Twenty-one homes, shacks, brick rooms, and tents were destroyed. During the last battle Israel waged against the residents of this village, on 6 December 2006, Israeli forces demolished 17 homes - more than half the village. But the villagers, with the help of friends and the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages, managed to rebuild roofs over their heads, to protect them from the harsh Negev winter weather. Today, however, it seems that Israel might have won the battle -- and the war - -- against its citizens in the Northern Negev.
But where will they go now? The once-more-newly-homeless 30 adults and 63 children? To the streets of Laqia or Beer-Sheva?
The residents of the village of Twail Abu-Jarwal bought plots of land from the Israeli government in the town of Laqia in 1978. They lived on the outskirts of town in 'illegal' and ever more crowded shacks for 25 years, waiting to receive their plots and build homes for their families. Several years ago, after not receiving any option from the government authorities to build legally, they returned to the location of their ancestral lands and built more 'illegal' shacks.
Israel's minister of interior, Roni Bar-On announced last month that he will destroy every last one of the 42,000 illegal structures in the Israeli Negev. But, dear Mr. Bar-On, what about Israel's responsibility towards its citizens? When will Israel create options for 80,000 of its Bedouin citizens in the Unrecognized Villages to legally build homes for their families?
For more information: Yeela Raanan, Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages. 054 7487005. y*t@gmail.com
***
(3) Israeli gunboat fires on Palestinian fishermen
Reuters - 11 January 2007 http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldnews&storyID=2007-01-11T233906Z_01_L11488990_RTRUKOC_0_US-PALESTINIANS-ISRAEL-VIOLENCE.xml
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli gunboat opened fire on a Palestinian fishing boat the Gaza Strip, wounding two of its crew, a Palestinian security source said on Friday, adding that a third fisherman was missing.
An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed the gunboat had fired warning shots when the fishing boat was spotted near Israel's territorial waters on Thursday but she said the Israeli naval crew reported they had not hit anyone.
"Warning shots were fired in the air and at the boat, but the naval crew reported that nobody had been hit and that they continued to fish after the shooting had stopped," she said.
Hospital staff in Gaza said the two men were not seriously hurt. Security officials said the search for the missing fisherman would continue after first light.
Gunmen fired a makeshift rocket from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel late on Thursday which fell in an open area and caused no casualties or damage, the army said.
Earlier, in the northern Gaza Strip, a gunman from the governing Hamas militant group showed off a small Israeli surveillance drone which the group said it had shot down.
The Israeli army said the drone came down because of a technical fault and it had not been shot down.
***
(4) Palestine 2007: Genocide in Gaza, Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank
By Ilan Pappe
The Electronic Intifada - 11 January 2007 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6374.shtml
On this stage, not so long ago, I claimed that Israel is conducting genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip. I hesitated a lot before using this very charged term and yet decided to adopt it. Indeed, the responses I received, including from some leading human rights activists, indicated a certain unease over the usage of such a term. I was inclined to rethink the term for a while, but came back to employing it today with even stronger conviction: it is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip.
On 28 December 2006, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem published its annual report about the Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories. Israeli forces killed this last year six hundred and sixty citizens. The number of Palestinians killed by Israel last year tripled in comparison to the previous year (around two hundred). According to B'Tselem, the Israelis killed one hundred and forty one children in the last year. Most of the dead are from the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli forces demolished almost 300 houses and slew entire families. This means that since 2000, Israeli forces killed almost four thousand Palestinians, half of them children; more than twenty thousand were wounded.
B'Tselem is a conservative organization, and the numbers may be higher. But the point is not just about the escalating intentional killing, it is about the trend and the strategy. As 2007 commences, Israeli policymakers are facing two very different realities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the former, they are closer than ever to finishing the construction of their eastern border. Their internal ideological debate is over and their master plan for annexing half of the West Bank is being implemented at an ever-growing speed. The last phase was delayed due to the promises made by Israel, under the Road Map, not to build new settlements. Israel found two ways of circumventing this alleged prohibition. First, it defined a third of the West Bank as Greater Jerusalem, which allowed it to build within this new annexed area towns and community centers. Secondly, it expanded old settlements to such proportions so that there was no need to build new ones. This trend was given an additional push in 2006 (hundreds of caravans were installed to mark the border of the expansions, the planning schemes for the new towns and neighborhoods were finalized and the apartheid bypass roads and highway system completed). In all, the settlements, the army bases, the roads and the wall will allow Israel to annex almost half of the West Bank by 2010. Within these territories there will be a considerable number of Palestinians, against whom the Israeli authorities will continue to implement slow and creeping transfer policies -- too boring as a subject for the western media to bother with and too elusive for human rights organizations to make a general point about them. There is no rush; as far as the Israelis are concerned, they have the upper hand there: the daily abusive and dehumanizing mixed mechanisms of army and bureaucracy is as effective as ever in contributing its own share to the dispossession process.
The strategic thinking of Ariel Sharon that this policy is far better than the one offered by the blunt 'transferists' or ethnic cleansers, such as Avigdor Liberman's advocacy, is accepted by everyone in the government, from Labor to Kadima. The petit crimes of state terrorism are also effective as they enable liberal Zionists around the world to softly condemn Israel and yet categorize any genuine criticism on Israel's criminal policies as anti-Semitism.
On the other hand, there is no clear Israeli strategy as yet for the Gaza Strip; but there is a daily experiment with one. Gaza, in the eyes of the Israelis, is a very different geo-political entity from that of the West Bank. Hamas controls Gaza, while Abu Mazen seems to run the fragmented West Bank with Israeli and American blessing. There is no chunk of land in Gaza that Israel covets and there is no hinterland, like Jordan, to which the Palestinians of Gaza can be expelled. Ethnic cleansing is ineffective here.
The earlier strategy in Gaza was ghettoizing the Palestinians there, but this is not working. The ghettoized community continues to express its will for life by firing primitive missiles into Israel. Ghettoizing or quarantining unwanted communities, even if they were regarded as sub-human or dangerous, never worked in history as a solution. The Jews know it best from their own history. The next stages against such communities in the past were even more horrific and barbaric. It is difficult to tell what the future holds for the Gaza population, ghettoized, quarantined, unwanted and demonized. Will it be a repeat of the ominous historical examples or is a better fate still possible?
Creating the prison and throwing the key to the sea, as UN Special Reporter John Dugard has put it, was an option the Palestinians in Gaza reacted against with force as soon as September 2005. They were determined to show at the very least that they were still part of the West Bank and Palestine. In that month, they launched the first significant, in number and not quality, barrage of missiles into the Western Negev. The shelling was a response to an Israeli campaign of mass arrests of Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in the Tul Karem area. The Israelis responded with operation 'First Rain'. It is worth dwelling for a moment on the nature of that operation. It was inspired by the punitive measures inflicted first by colonialist powers, and then by dictatorships, against rebellious imprisoned or banished communities. A frightening show of the oppressor's power to intimidate preceded all kind of collective and brutal punishments, ending with a large number of dead and wounded among the victims. In 'First Rain', supersonic flights were flown over Gaza to terrorize the entire population, succeeded by the heavy bombardment of vast areas from the sea, sky and land. The logic, the Israeli army explained, was to create pressure so as to weaken the Gaza community's support for the rocket launchers. As was expected, by the Israelis as well, the operation only increased the support for the rocket launchers and gave impetus to their next attempt. The real purpose of that particular operation was experimental. The Israeli generals wished to know how such operations would be received at home, in the region and in the world. And it seems that instantly the answer was 'very well'; namely, no one took an interest in the scores of dead and hundreds of wounded Palestinians left behind after the 'First Rain' subsided.
And hence since 'First Rain' and until June 2006, all the following operations were similarly modeled. The difference was in their escalation: more firepower, more causalities and more collateral damage and, as to be expected, more Qassam missiles in response. Accompanying measures in 2006 were more sinister means of ensuring the full imprisonment of the people of Gaza through boycott and blockade, with which the EU is still shamefully collaborating.
The capture of Gilad Shalit in June 2006 was irrelevant in the general scheme of things, but nonetheless provided an opportunity for the Israelis to escalate even more the components of the tactical and allegedly punitive missions. After all, there was still no strategy that followed the tactical decision of Ariel Sharon to take out 8,000 settlers whose presence complicated 'punitive' missions and whose eviction made him almost a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. Since then, the 'punitive' actions continue and become themselves a strategy.
The Israeli army loves drama and therefore also escalated the language. 'First Rain' was replaced by 'Summer Rains', a general name that was given to the 'punitive' operations since June 2006 (in a country where there is no rain in the summer, the only precipitation that one can expect are showers of F-16 bombs and artillery shells hitting people of Gaza).
'Summer Rains' brought a novel component: the land invasion into parts of the Gaza Strip. This enabled the army to kill citizens even more effectively and to present it as a result of heavy fighting within dense populated areas, an inevitable result of the circumstances and not of Israeli policies. With the close of summer came operation 'Autumn Clouds' which was even more efficient: on 1 November 2006, in less than 48 hours, the Israelis killed seventy civilians; by the end of that month, with additional mini operations accompanying it, almost two hundred were killed, half of them children and women. As one can see from the dates, some of the activity was parallel to the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, making it easier to complete the operations without much external attention, let alone criticism.
>From 'First Rain' to 'Autumn Clouds' one can see escalation in every parameter. The first is the disappearance of the distinction between civilian and non-civilian targets: the senseless killing has turned the population at large to the main target for the army's operation. The second one is the escalation in the means: employment of every possible killing machines the Israeli army possesses. Thirdly, the escalation is conspicuous in the number of casualties: with each operation, and each future operation, a much larger number of people are likely to be killed and wounded. Finally, and most importantly, the operations become a strategy -- the way Israel intends to solve the problem of the Gaza Strip.
A creeping transfer in the West Bank and a measured genocidal policy in the Gaza Strip are the two strategies Israel employs today. From an electoral point of view, the one in Gaza is problematic as it does not reap any tangible results; the West Bank under Abu Mazen is yielding to Israeli pressure and there is no significant force that arrests the Israeli strategy of annexation and dispossession. But Gaza continues to fire back. On the one hand, this would enable the Israeli army to initiate more massive genocidal operations in the future. But there is also the great danger, on the other, that as happened in 1948, the army would demand a more drastic and systematic 'punitive' and collateral action against the besieged people of the Gaza Strip.
Ironically, the Israeli killing machine has rested lately. Even relatively large number of Qassam missiles, including one or two quite deadly ones, did not stir the army to action. Though the army's spokesmen say it shows 'restraint', it never did in the past and is not likely to do so in the future. The army rests, as its generals are content with the internal killing that rages on in Gaza and does the job for them. They watch with satisfaction the emerging civil war in Gaza, which Israel foments and encourages. From Israel's point of view it does not really mater how Gaza would eventually be demographically downsized, be it by internal or Israeli slaying. The responsibility of ending the internal fighting lies of course with the Palestinian groups themselves, but the American and Israeli interference, the continued imprisonment, the starvation and strangulation of Gaza are all factors that make such an internal peace process very difficult. But it will take place soon and then with the first early sign that it subsided, the Israeli 'Summer Rains' will fall down again on the people of Gaza, wreaking havoc and death.
And one should never tire of stating the inevitable political conclusions from this dismal reality of the year we left behind and in the face of the one that awaits us. There is still no other way of stopping Israel than besides boycott, divestment and sanctions. We should all support it clearly, openly, unconditionally, regardless of what the gurus of our world tell us about the efficiency or raison d'etre of such actions. The UN would not intervene in Gaza as it does in Africa; the peace noble laureates would not enlist to its defense as they do for causes in Southeast Asia. The numbers of people killed there are not staggering as far as other calamities are concerned, and it is not a new story -- it is dangerously old and troubling. The only soft point of this killing machine is its oxygen lines to 'western' civilization and public opinion. It is still possible to puncture them and make it at least more difficult for the Israelis to implement their future strategy of eliminating the Palestinian people either by cleansing them in the West Bank or genociding them in the Gaza Strip.
Ilan Pappe is senior lecturer in the University of Haifa Department of political Science and Chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies in Haifa. His books include, among others, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (London and New York 1992), The Israel/Palestine Question (London and New York 1999), A History of Modern Palestine (Cambridge 2003), The Modern Middle East (London and New York 2005) and his latest, Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006).