Posts Tagged ‘Israel’

One or both are right

Posted: January 7, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news, war
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Rich Lowry makes a strong point concerning Gaza:

we shouldn’t fool ourselves that this operation is going to “discredit” Hamas, as some conservatives hope, much or at all. Yes, Hamas ultimately is responsible for the conflict. But when an Israeli shell kills your family or your neighbor’s family, most people aren’t going to think it through enough to blame Hamas, they are going to direct their hatred and their desire for revenge at Israel. That’s why probably the most that realistically can be hoped for from this operation is a diminishment of Hamas’ capabilities. Achieving more than that would require holding territory and engaging in classic counter-insurgency operations, including providing services to win over the population. Israel’s not going to do that, and it doesn’t seem the PA is capable of it.

He has a really good point, Germany and Japan wouldn’t be what they are today if it hadn’t been for the post WW II occupation.

Headlines like this suggest that he might be wrong at least in one sense:

At least some of them know the identity of their tormentors. A New York Times dispatch captured an excruciating moment that took place in a hospital morgue, where a mother had just found half of the body of her 17-year-old daughter.

“May God exterminate Hamas!” screamed the woman in crystal-clear understanding that the terrorist band’s reckless, inhuman actions had brought death to her child.

This is not the only example of this type of talk.

This suggests that Gazans either feel Hamas is incapable to retaliate or they are just too angry to care. It is a seminal change.

This doesn’t mean that these people aren’t going to blame Israel as well, people who have lost friends and loved ones will have plenty of grief and anger to go around. Hatred of Hamas is not the same as tolerance for Israel.

Game night roundup

Posted: January 7, 2009 by datechguy in gaming, personal, war
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Played a game called Descent Journey’s in the Dark last night. We didn’t finish as we started late (my fault) but it was better than I thought it would be. I would feel pretty good about recommending it to other gamers.

Then again for a price of $90 it oughta be good.

The subject of the Gaza operation came up. All agreed that Hamas are a bunch of bastards. My hesitation on the ground offensive wasn’t shared by anyone but 60% of the table criticized Israel for settlement activity on the west bank for giving Hamas an excuse. Barbara Lerner would take exception to that.

Speaking of gamers one of the guys saw The Gamers 2 recently and kept going on and on about it. It would have to be really funny to be better than the first one.

Tactics 101

Posted: January 6, 2009 by datechguy in war
Tags: , ,

Via the Muqata.

Understand the war with one image

Palestinians vs Israelis in one image

He expresses it better than me

Posted: January 6, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news, war
Tags: , ,

I’ve been wrestling with a post I made yesterday through several replies and updates. I think Jeff Goldberg (via Glenn) in the Atlantic expressed what I’ve been thinking much better than me:

Okay, yesterday I was depressed. Today, I’m just pissed off. It’s absolutely astonishing to me how interested the world is in Israel’s failings. This is the source of a bitter but hilarious observation I once heard a Kurdish leader make: He was complaining to me that his people were cursed, and I asked him what he meant: Cursed by geography, cursed by their proximity to Kurd-hating Arabs, what? He said the Kurds were cursed because they didn’t have Jewish enemies. Only with Jewish enemies would the world pay attention to their plight.

…

we’ve all seen endless pictures of dead Palestinian children now. It’s a terrible, ghastly, horrible thing, the deaths of children, and for the parents it doesn’t matter if they were killed by accident or by mistake. But ask yourselves this: Why are these pictures so omnipresent? I’ll tell you why, again from firsthand, and repeated, experience: Hamas (and the Aksa Brigades, and Islamic Jihad, the whole bunch) prevents the burial, or even preparation of the bodies for burial, until the bodies are used as props in the Palestinian Passion Play. Once, in Khan Younis, I actually saw gunmen unwrap a shrouded body, carry it a hundred yards and position it atop a pile of rubble — and then wait a half-hour until photographers showed. It was one of the more horrible things I’ve seen in my life. And it’s typical of Hamas. If reporters would probe deeper, they’d learn the awful truth of Hamas. But Palestinian moral failings are not of great interest to many people.

The question is why are Palestinian moral failings not of great interest to people, why are the Kurds cursed to not have Jewish foes?

Can someone on the left explain this to me? I really need an answer to this that leads me to different conclusions.

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