Posts Tagged ‘Israel’

This one is for my friends at the open house

Posted: January 5, 2009 by datechguy in personal, war
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At my open house I mentioned the non-shrapnel missiles that Israel is using to chase civilians before blasts. A pair of liberal friends of mine looked at me like I had two heads or was a naive idiot so this post is for them. The process is known as “Knocking on the roof” here is a post on the subject:

5:05 PM Just to give people an idea of how the Israeli Air Force works, they use a method called “Knocking On The Roof”. There are several steps…
1. The AF calls the house they’re about to hit that they are about to bomb it.
2. The residents send all the women and children to the roof of the building with the understanding that the AF won’t strike civilians.
3. The AF has developed a small missile that creates a small non-lethal explosion without shrapnel to scare off all the civilians.
4. When they have left the area the building is hit with the big guns.

The base post is from this post at The Muqata which along with Israellycool has been liveblogging the war. (I was sure I had read it at Israellycool but was mistaken).


This post at Mere Rethoric also mentions it but not by name:

The IDF has made frequent use of what is known as “knocking on the roof”: Militants are warned by phone when a residential building used to store arms will be bombed, and told to vacate the premised together with their neighbors. The weapons caches are hit only after the residents leave. Hamas has tried placing civilians on the roofs of such buildings when the phone call warning comes in. In these cases, the IDF fired antitank missiles near the building, and in a few cases the residents left

His bottom line is the war’s bottom line:

Israel warns the Palestinian civilians whom Hamas has endangered. Hamas uses those warnings to endanger their civilians even more dramatically. Israel gets blamed for Palestinian civilian casualties. Makes perfect sense.

The irony is both on offense and defense our Palestinian friends try to maximize civilian deaths, both Israeli and their own. This is just plain a different culture.

More photo propaganda

Posted: January 5, 2009 by datechguy in war
Tags: ,

Lawhawk, via Mere Rethoric, via Hotair leads us to the latest example of phony Palestinian pictures on the war.

At last, we finally figure out what has happened – and curiously, it wasn’t the most recent photo that tells the story; but the oldest. This wasn’t some innocent youth caught up in violence. It wasn’t someone who was throwing rocks or hurling insults at Israelis who responded with lethal force. It was a thug who threw a Molotov cocktail at Israelis, and appears to have been injured.

Mere Rhetoric leads us through Zombietime’s old taxonomy of fraud.

The only reason I’m leaving out the WaPo pictures of the healthy-looking children on stretchers is because I can’t decide whether Hamas staged the scene or whether the photojournalist did the composition on his own. In any case: do you think they’re dumb enough to try to photoshop pictures this time? My basic belief in behavioral conditioning says no. But my appreciation for the shamelessness of anti-Israel journalism says “I wish I had an eye for what a post-smudged clone tool looks like.

I will say this, if Hamas is slaughtering their own Palestinians do you think they would hesitate to kill any photo journalist who didn’t tow the line? In fact they could do it and blame Israel and get extra propaganda points. It’s asking a lot of guts to ask these guys to put themselves out there.

UPDATE: It hits me that this is why Michael Totten is such an amazing guy and one of the best reporters in the world. He takes those risks and reports the truth anyway without any backup.

Even more Sherman.

Posted: January 5, 2009 by datechguy in Uncategorized, war
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Either Sherman was a much better analogy than I thought or there are a million Civil War buffs out there just dying to use him in a post. The latest is the American Thinker:

While the Union Army respected the sanctity of private homes, all public buildings and infrastructure including railroads were subject to complete destruction. Needless to say, resistance was not tolerated. Millions of slaves were freed in the wake of his march.

Recognizing that it was not in their economic interest to continue the fight, civilian political support for the Confederacy began a precipitous collapse and the war soon ended. Despite rebellious pledges that the “South Would Rise Again”, peace and prosperity has lasted 144 years.

It’s a good argument except for the religious component, if the Palestinian Arabs are convinced that there is a religious component they may fight anyways. Secondly unionists were not summarily executed in the south, just try to express support for Israel in Gaza, hell try to express support for Fatah in Gaza and see what happens. Thirdly you didn’t have schoolrooms teaching their kids everyday that the North was a bunch or murderous barbarians. Although AFTER the war the north didn’t do so well in southern classrooms.

I would have found a source other than Wikipedia myself, after all it’s history and not Doctor Who we are talking about.

Martin Lewis hits the spot

Posted: January 4, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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At the Huffington Post Martin Lewis hits the bulls eye:

The English have claimed that they are merely retaliating against the V-1 flying bombs being launched indiscriminately by Nazis at their civilian population in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Coventry and other cities. The English point out that their enemy is sworn to its utter destruction and has used the missiles and flying bombs against its civilians without any regard to English loss of life. Moreover it makes the case that their own bombing missions are specifically directed to military targets that the German army has intentionally planted in the heart of civilian populations to try and deter English counter-attacks.

These points may of course be true – but they are utterly besides the point.

Of course England has a right to exist. Of course England has a right to defend itself. But it should ensure that its responses are PROPORTIONATE.

Since many more Germans are dying than English – the English should either tone down the success and accuracy of their bombing – or allow the Germans to catch up on the death count.

Read it all and the comments. via Israellycool guest poster Brian.

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