The Israeli’s just can’t seem to get a break. Hamas blows the hell out of Israel for months on end, and people are ticked off because they are finally fighting back. I’m ticked off too, because they took so long to get busy. I still have a number of friends in Israel, and I think they should have done what they are doing long ago.
But, the spinners, even here on wordpress, are making this all out to be a thing of Israel killing civilians and non-combatants. Well, the IDF put up a few actual films of the strikes. Lo, and behold! They got shots of missiles being loaded among other things.
Conservative Libertarian Outpost 
January 2, 2009 at 02:01
You’ve got to be joking. Here I was sympathisng with you on your previous post about what’s happening to the USA with the education system and financial system and all, but I see your education and zionist-socialist media have gotten through to you.
1. Iran hasn’t attacked a foreign country in over two hundred years. It is Israel that is the belligerent, racist settler state that keeps invading its neighbours. It is Israel that was for the invasion of Iraq (nothing to do with 9.11, no WMD) and that calls for war against Iran because Iran threatens Israeli regional hegemony, NOT its existence)
2. It is Israel that is blowing the hell out of Gaza, not Hamas. Hamas have been lobbing largely ineffectual homemade rockets to defend themselves from the ongoing, longstanding Israeli occupation and the tightening noose of an inhumane siege and blockade that sees Israel control their airspace, water, and who comes and goes.
Israel has made Gaza a prison, a Ghetto, of 1.5 million people. If you were stripped of food for yourself and your family and immobile, wouldn’t you fight back? If your electricity generators, factories, places of worship, schools etc were bombed by Israel and your people killed in a slow-motion genocide as Israel is doing, what would you do?
Hamas has every right to resist Israel’s monstrous actions.
I’m an advocate for Palestine and I also happen to be a libertarian. The sooner the US stops its $3 billion a year hand-outs to Israel the sooner peace will come and Israel will be forced to make peace with its neighbours.
For the record, all the Arab states offered Israel full recognition and diplomatic relations in the 2002 Saudi Peace Plan, and all Israel has to do is end its 60 year occupation of Palestine and finally abide by internationally-recognised 1967 borders.
Instead, it spurns this and continues its theft of Palestinian land to build illegal settlements.
yes, Israel ARE killing civilians and non-combatants. The UN”s conservative estimate is a quarter. In Lebanon in 2006, MOST of those murdered by Israel were combatants. In contrast, Lebanon’s Hezbollah killed mostly Israeli combatants.
The only thing israel is getting busy on its its world propaganda machine and its continuing to murder Palestinians after stealing their land and actively preventing a state.
Please, don’t be a sucker for it. Yes, there are many of us on WP who correcting the ISRAELI spin. I have friends there too, and endeavour to feature Israeli voices who sopeak up. Try Uri Avnery and Ilan Pappe and Amira Hass and Gideon Levy. And see the Al Jazeera YouTube channel to balance what the official state Israeli state propaganda machine gives out. They show what you won’t find in corporate, pro-Israeli-owned US mass media.
Land of the free? I fear not. I wish you well despite disagreeing with you.
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January 2, 2009 at 05:33
Correction, if you please: In Lebanon in 2006, MOST of those murdered by Israel were NONcombatants.
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January 2, 2009 at 18:47
Correction acknowledged. However, you are new to this blog, so I will allow your comment to remain as stated. I will even let the mis-spells and grammatical errors remain.
I am not Marc, after all, and I do understand what you are expressing.
Now, I post, with citation, and linked information what others say, and you attribute those things to me..? Shame on you. You are obviously more intelligent than that. You drawing a bit to heavy on the hooka?
You seem to have gotten lost at point two. Care to re-post? I am more than willing to allow that. I understand, and respect your feelings pg, which is what, for convenience I will call you here. I believe that you are, like me, a philosophical Libertarian, not one of the loony’s that have taken over the Libertarian Party.
Now, pg, I want you to come back here, with an addendum. I see that you have additional postings. I will give you the same opportunity to further develop you ideas on those.
You say that you are a Libertarian. Great! Now, please reference your beliefs; use Ayn Rand, John Locke, Adam Smith, hell? Any of the true founders of Libertarianism to defend what you stated above.
For now, I will go and take a look at your other comments.
pg?
Nothing, nothing at all has true value, unless you, yourself, has earned it…
I wish you well.
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January 2, 2009 at 23:05
Dear Unknown Friend,
I am not sure to whom to address this to if there is more than one user at this site, but in any case I thank you for your response. I am happy to be addressed as PG, the moniker of my site, or as Ann, my real first name.
Yes, I am a philosophical libertarian and have read Adam Smith and John Locke, though am not keen on Ayn Rand. I am also not an American but admire the original ideals that frame your Constitution. My stance differs substantially from conservative libertarianism only in the position on individual entitlement to property that might be considered the commons and I support some judicious regulation of financial and other transnational corporations (though not of over-regulation of small to medium owned businesses).
I won’t delve too much into the political philosophy to which I ascribe other than to note that we do share similarities, as well as some differences. I also read and share the views of the anti-war conservatives such as Andrew Bacevich, Paul Craig Roberts, Chalmers Johnson and Justin Raimondo. I think the designation of ‘left’ and ‘right’ are becoming less tenable and applicable and the confected ‘progressive-conservative’ dualism peculiar to the US. I am thus not a (US) Democrat or Republican, and am as dismayed by the views of Obama as I am of Bush, and see them as both ultimately captive to the hawkish Israel Lobby.
Thank you for allowing the correction, which was simply editorial in my haste.
I fear that my point two still stands, and that I was not at all smoking hookah, I neither smoke, drink, nor partake of any addictive substances, even caffeine. I have also been around plenty of hookas (narghiles) in the Middle East. I happen to be an Eastern-rite Christian. It doesn’t matter which denomination, I prefer not to become mired in intra-denominational politics. It is enough to say that I am Christian.
It is indeed Israel that is blowing the hell out of Gaza, not the other way around. Gaza is a concentration camp created by Israel, whose populace in part come from villages that were ethnically cleansed by Israel in 1948, and Israel’s illegal settlements and encroachments onto private Palestinian land continues under the protection of that other Israeli-occupied territory, Capitol Hill.
Hamas’s rockets are crude and ineffective and have hardly killed anybody. In this current Israeli assault, over 400 Palestinians have died to 4 Israelis. And it was initiated by Israel, who reneged on the six month ceasefire by not opening the crossings they control, despite claiming they “withdrew from the area”.
Israel’s endgame is to use these Hamas rockets as a pretext to further wage war, expel the Palestinians and prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. Israel in fact actively helped the creation of Hamas in the 80s in a strategy to fragment and weaken the more secular PLO. See, for example, See Hamas history tied to Israel by Richard Sale (UPI):
You can read more at that link, the original UPI is archived but the full article is available at the link provided. I’d be happy to proffer other links and evidence as well.
It is a sad fact that the pro-Israeli stance of the zionist mainstream in the US would have us believe that Israel is the victim when its the other way around. Israeli media is in fact far ahead of its US counterpart in critically discussing these issues. Haaretz and Y-Net and other Israeli media are amongst my daily reading as an educator.
There are a number of excellent US-based initiatives, too, among them the Council for the National Interest (CNI) which was co-founded by a Republican former Senator Paul Findley with more courage and balls than the whole current Congress put together, with some honourable exceptions such as Dennis Kucinich. Yes, I know he’s a Democrat, but I am neither Republican nor Democrat and am not a partisan either way. See cnionline.org for more.
I stand by each one of my statements and would be more than happy to elaborate or respond to anything you consider not absolutely and firmly based in reality.
Ann
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January 3, 2009 at 06:10
Well stated although I disagree on several points. Reasoned disagreement is always welcome here Ann, if I may call you that.
Modern Israel was formed by what, at that time, was a legal entity. What had been done to the Jewish people was horrendous, and I believe that there was a collective world consciousness, if not outright guilt, that led to the decisions of many people. Hence, the formation of Israel. I cannot say that based upon experience, because I had not even been born yet. After having talked about this with many people that were alive then I believe that very well may have been the case.
I simply cannot call what the Israeli’s did after that as ethnic cleansing. It just does not qualify as such in my using of the term.
Those homemade rockets rained down on Israel for months causing terror and destruction. As of late, the Hamas fighters have been armed with much more effective weaponry. Was Israel supposed to just plod along and allow this sort of thing to continue?
As for Israel being involved in the formation of Hamas? History is riddled with this or that government dancing with the devil at various times. That doesn’t make it right, but it is historical fact, and it continues to this day.
Then there is the notation that the US Congress is controlled by some Jewish lobby. The first time that I ever heard that was from a member of the American Nazi Party. The line hasn’t changed since I heard that madman speak. Only the sources. Americans, in general, tend to root for the little guy in a fight. Israel, is by far the little guy in this conflict with the Muslims. I would think that has more to do with supporting Israel than any lobby. Not to mention that those very same people that attack Israel on a regular basis have been killing Americans for quite some time. I myself being one of those.
Dennis Kucinich? Now, there is a classic case of a broken clock being correct twice a day.
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January 3, 2009 at 08:09
Please do call me Ann. I agree that what was done during WWII to Jews, gypsies and others was indeed horrendous. As was the awful purges by orchestrated famines of Christian Ukrainians in the lesser-known Holodomor. But the European Holocaust does not justify creating a state by ethnically cleansing another. There were already people in Palestine. British-mandated Palestine was a multi-religious state of Christians, Jews and Muslims coexisting by and large peacefully.
The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 definitely did involve ethnic cleansing of Arab villages (Arab Muslim as well as Arab Christian) by any accepted definition of the term, and this is acknowledged by several Israeli academics such as Ilan Pappe and even the hawkish Benny Morris.
Yes, those homemade rockets did create terror, although they were more often a nuisance than deadly in contrast to Israeli strikes, and I do not condone them. But they hardly occurred in isolation. You neglect to mention what they were in response to: ongoing Israeli strikes, Israeli terror and destruction, sonic booms, killing of children, not allowing pregnant women and those needing medical attention out, blockades, humiliation at checkpoints, assassinations, kidnappings, theft of land, all-out denial of liberty.
Israel could have the homemade rockets stop by simply and finally ending its illegal and immoral occupation, worsened to unbearable hardship in recent times by an eighteen month siege. The Qassams are not the issue, they are a pretext. As veteran Israeli analyst and former MK Uri Avnery notes in As Uri Avnery recently observed in Help! A Ceasefire:
That strategic aim is to establish a Greater Israel by preventing a Palestinian state and finishing the ethnic cleansing project started in 1948. You can’t keep invoking the Holocaust to justify robbing the indigenous inhabitants of their land and liberty. You can’t keep invoking perpetual victimhood when you have the world’s fourth strongest military with a nuclear arsenal, all backed by the world’s superpower. Israel, the “little guy”? Hardly!
If anything its the Palestinians that are the little guy and the US since Wilsonian times claimed to support self-determination.
Regarding the Israel Lobby, I’m not referring to generically Jewish lobbies — the American Jewish community is diverse and many of their views are *not* represented in likudist lobbies like AIPAC and the ADL. These groups actively influence (in some cases even virtually write) policy that favours their stance of Israel. US foreign policy is extremely skewed towards not just Israel at the expense of the rest of the Middle East, but a very particular political position that obstructs peace. It is not anti-Judaic/ Semitic to point this out, and I would hardly call Paul Findley, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt “nazis”. In fact all are establishment figures and I would highly recommend their work.
That US policy is tilted towards Israel and that the Israel Lobby mobilises considerable resources to maintain this “special relationship” is a fact. It also means that the Lobby has a vested interested in maintaining the appearance of Arab and Muslim antagonism towards the US, which, especially before 2001, was negligible and was only because of US bias towards Israel!
I’m not sure what you mean by this statement: “Not to mention that those very same people that attack Israel on a regular basis have been killing Americans for quite some time. I myself being one of those.” I am sorry to gear you have been attacked by anybody.
Lastly, touché re Kucinich. I guess no (US) Democrat is ever going to get anywhere near a noise of approval from you, huh? 😉
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January 3, 2009 at 08:25
PS. One of my blog buddies from Israel, Steve blogs here if you are at all interested in getting an alternative Israeli perspective: http://desertpeace.wordpress.com. I also endeavour to feature Israeli voices of conscience if you look around my site. Despite our different positions, I value debate and a meeting of minds. I came over here when a comment was left on a group blog on Israel to which I contribute, and its always an interesting experience engaging with someone with views very different (on some issues, almost diametrically opposed!) to one’s own. I’ll leave it there so as not to trespass on your time, and because I’m not a great typist, as you can tell from the typos.
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January 4, 2009 at 18:37
I will check out the bog that you referenced.
As for the statement that you posted about Democrats..? Two current office holders are among those that call me friend. As do I them.
There is only one way that I can respond to what you listed above though; You appear to have graduated from propaganda 101 with honors. Did you study under Goebbels by any chance..?
I both speak, and read Typonese, don’t worry about it.
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January 5, 2009 at 02:47
Good for you that you have Democratic Party friends.
No, it is not propaganda, and your rhetorical question is also inapplicable. By all means dispute any of my assertions with reason and evidence, otherwise yours is an unsupported charge. It is not I or my fellow advocates for justice and liberty who are the purveyors of propaganda but the extensive Israel media-war machine.
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” And, as George Orwell foresaw, this is such a time with regard to much of the mainstream media.
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January 5, 2009 at 16:45
I’m not even going to bother with responding. Hamas has been violating the so called cease fire for months. Now, finally, the Israeli’s strike back.
Too little, and too late IMO.
Engaging in new-speak doesn’t make a lot of sense either.
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January 13, 2009 at 00:13
another zionist apologist justifying genocide just because hes Jewish
pffffft
you shouldve told that to the Jews in the warsaw ghetto
and the 23 Million Russians who were slaughtered
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January 13, 2009 at 07:48
pffft? Yet another pathetic excuse for an intellectual I see.
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