Unprecedented Numbers Of Americans Question Israel's Actions In Gaza

http://www.alternet.org/audits/117568/unprecedented_numbers_of_americans_question_israel%27s_actions_in_gaza/?page=2

Unprecedented Numbers of Americans Question Israel's Actions in Gaza
By Max Blumenthal, Huffington Post. Posted January 6, 2009.

Almost as soon as the first Israeli missile struck the Gaza Strip, a veteran cheering squad suited up to support the home team. "Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life," Charles Krauthammer claimed in the Washington Post. Echoing Krauthammer, Alan Dershowitz called the Israeli attack on Gaza, "Perfectly 'Proportionate.'" And in the New York Times, Israeli historian Benny Morris described his country's airstrikes as "highly efficient."

While the cheerleaders testified to the superior moral fiber of their team, the Palestinian civilian death toll mounted. Israeli missiles tore at least fifteen Palestinian police cadets to shreds at a graduation ceremony, blew twelve worshipers to pieces (including six children) while they left evening prayers at a mosque, flattened the elite American International School, killed five sisters while they slept in their beds, and liquidated 9 women and children in order to kill a single Hamas leader. So far, Israeli forces have killed at least 500 Gazans and wounded some two thousand, including hundreds of children. Yesterday, the IDF blanketed parts of Gaza with white phosphorus, a chemical weapon Saddam Hussein once deployed against Kurdish rebels.

"It was Israel at its best," Yossi Klein Halevi declared in the New Republic.

By New Year's Day, Israel's cheering squad had turned the opinion pages of major American newspapers into their own personal romper room. Of all the editorial contributions published by the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times since the Israel's war on Gaza began, to my knowledge only one offered a skeptical view of the assault. But that editorial, by Israeli novelist David Grossman, contained not a single word about the Palestinian casualties of IDF attacks. Even while calling for a cease fire, Grossman promised, "We can always start shooting again."

- snip -

But while Israel's PR machine cranked its Mighty Wurlitzer to full blast, drowning out all opposing voices with its droning sound, a surprisingly substantial portion of the American public decided to dance to its own tune. According to a December 31 Rasmussen poll (so far the only measure of US opinion on the Gaza assault), while Americans remained overwhelmingly supportive of Israel, they were split almost evenly on the question of whether Israel should attack Gaza -- 44% in favor of the assault and 41% against it. The internals are even more remarkable.

While Republicans supported the assault on Gaza by a large margin, a predictable finding, only 31% of Democrats did. Members of the Democratic base thus stood in sharp contrast to most of their elected representatives (freshman Rep. Donna Edwards is a notable exception), who backed the latest Israeli assault in lockstep, and seem to support Israel no matter what it does. The rift between the progressive base and the party played out on Barack Obama's Change.gov site, which was deluged in recent days with demands for a statement condemning Israel's assault on Gaza.

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Naaa, Duuu? :hug:

Did ALL Americans favor the invasion of Iraq? Or since one lives in the country do you broad brush all as being for war? It's so easy to broadbrush as if all Jews or Israelis favor this action or that all Israelis and Jews are dragged around by AIPAC an the neo cons. A shallow viewpoint that is both wrong and a guise to paint Israel as all evil. This despite the large peace movement inside Israel and many Jews worldwide who would love to see a solution to this problem.

Negotiations and peace is a two way process. No, I don't support the full-fledged invasion going on in Gaza and wish there was a way all sides could negotiate, but that isn't the world we live in. Just like Likud gains from polarizing and pushing violence, so does Hamas...a group just as resolute, if not moreso, in destroying Israel and "driving the Jews into the sea". The greater the desperation and polarization, the more it serves Hamas' political purposes...it's how they got started (during the '88 Intifada) and each of these incursions and cycles of violence has only helped them gain further power.

The Palestinians have been given a raw deal by many hands. Their "brother Arabs" who saw this conflict as a way to difuse their own internal strifes...use Israel and the US as the enemy while repressing their own people or within the Palestinian movement by a series of self-serving and corrupt politicians who see continued strife...even if it means the death of their own people...as a means to gain more influence and power.

Therefore, much like with the US, the blame for Israel's actions rests, at least in part, with the people who elected their government. Nor did the people do much, if anything, to defuse this impeding disaster. One could see it coming as soon as Israel started putting up the wall, yet nothing was done by Israeli citizens.

Just like there's blood on all of America's hands over Iraq, there is blood on all of Israel's hands for this latest massacre.

I've actively opposed both the Iraq invasion and this regime's repression...as have many others here...some who spoke out and paid a price of it. No, those people don't have blood on their hands. I also know Jews and Israelis who are members of Peace Now...a group long committed to a peaceful resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian matter...not just a cease fire, but poiltical and economic integration...inclusion, not exclusion. And those people have blood on their hands? Some do...it's the blood of their loved ones.

The reason there's a wall was to keep suicide bombers from turning weddings into funerals and shopping centers into killing fields. The current invasion is a response to constant rocket attacks on Israeli villages...deliberate acts of provocation that aren't reported in the corporate media...attacks that may not kill, but do spread terror and energize those who hold hard lines.

Democracy has nothing to do with being monolithic. And discussing the blood on Likud's hands is fair, as long as the blood on Hamas' hands are included as well. As long as this issue is viewed as one-sided...be it pro-Israel/Likud or pro-Palestinian/Hamas then there will be further polarization and bloodshed.

Broadbrushing only covers over those walls...it doesn't help bring them down.

Hold no responsibility for the current madness? Wow, OK:eyes:

The wall was a lot more than a preventative measure, it was designed to seize water resources, food resources and land resources while establishing an effective apartheid up in Gaza. There were many Israelis who opposed the wall for these reasons, yet the Israeli government has pursued it anyway. And it is that wall which provoked the rocket attacks. What, you expect a people who are short on water, food, land and other resources to simply die quietly and peacefully? I know that's what the Israeli government was hoping for, but reality doesn't work out like that.

I'm not trying to broadbrush this, nor to be one sided. However your post that I responded to is trying to claim that the Israelis aren't responsible for this mess, and I was pointing out that in a democracy everybody has blood on their hands, since the government in a democratic society ultimately rests on the actions of the people. Thus, just like all Americans have blood on their hands due to the actions of the Bush administration, so do all Israelis have blood on their hands for the actions of their government.

Hmmm...didn't seem to appear in anything I wrote? I've been extremely critical of Likud who has promoted division and military solutions, but my point was, and is, there are also those on the Palestinian side...Hamas in specific...who are just as guilty of promoting the cycle of violence that has have made victims of both Israelis and Palestinians...and as long as its viewed a strictly a one-sided matter it will remain that way...more blood and no resolution. Is that what you favor?

This issue is a complex one that grows another layer every time an incident occurs. Just as we saw people go goofy about security in this country in the wake of 9/11, any attacks within Israel gets a similar reaction in that society...and, inversely, any Israeli military reaction against Gaza is used by Hamas to consolidate their power and popularity. Hamas was elected in much the same way as Likud was...so based on that, there's blood on everyone's hands whenever a Palestinian child or Israeli child is blown up by a missile.

I've traveled to the region and have seen both the scarcity of resources (which have always existed in that region) and how closely these people live...and how that accelerates both passions and tensions. As I posted earlier, the solution has to be one that realizes Israelis and Palestinians need to co-exist...neither has the ability to destroy the other...and how their futures are economically intermixed...like it or not. There are many moderates whose voices get drowned out when the extremists amp up the violence...and this isn't democracy in action, but quite the opposite.

Cheers...

To the Israeli government. I was simply pointing out that being a democracy, all people in Israel have blood on their hands. That's all I was doing. I wasn't denying that there's blame for the Palestinians, for the US, etc. Just that being a democracy, all Israelis have blood on their hands, not just the government. Get it?

"Aren't reported by corporate media"? Oh yes, I guess that CNN, MSNBC, syndicated columnists, the New York Times, and so many others are all small, independent media sources when they tell me - in gushing, glowing-faced detail - about how many rockets, to the exact number (6,464 at my last notice!), have been fired into Israel from Gaza since 2005, and then how this justifies the extermination of Palestinians left and right.

I guess the 15 Israelis killed in that three-year period of rocket attacks aren't quite tragic enough to report along with the number of rockets fired. Perhaps it would simply undercut the drama and war-whooping over the 500-odd Palestinians laying in mounds of their own intestines.

And what's the count of civilian deaths in Gaza right now --

PLUS, no food, no electricity, no medicines -- all of that quickly equals genocide!

despair and we observers are supposed to have awe for Israel. I'm old and I have been supporting Israel for decades. Now - it's a 180 for me. God bless the peace lovers and activists in Israel.

Bomb 'em up and burn 'em up. Eye for eyes as of last week. Or is it now nearly two weeks?

Massacre, madness, torment and torture.

180.

15 people in 8 years? Those deaths were most certainly in no way justifiable, but a serious threat? Please! And not a single one of them during the cease-fire, which Israel broke.

http://www.juancole.com/2009/01/have-bush-and-neocons-ruined-it-for.html

Kadima examples: Israelis point to thousands of rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel, without mentioning that no Israelis had been killed by them during the truce stretching from mid-June, 2008 until December 26. That is, the prelude to the most violent Israeli attack on Gaza since 1967 was . . . not a single Israeli death at the hands of Hamas in the preceding half-year. And in 8 years, Hamas had killed about 15 Israelis with those home made rockets, during which time the Israelis had killed nearly 5000 Palestinians, nearly 1000 of them minors. The rockets were small, handmade affairs for the most part and most landed uselessly. Some did damage to property and a few wounded or killed people. That would be a legitimate assertion. But the quotation of "thousands" of rockets is a half-truth and intentionally misleading.

We can't oppose collective blame and punishment when Israel does it to the Palestinians, and then accept it from other people.

How about opposing *all* collective punishment, and trying to call on all those who want peace? Naive I know; but the hard-line realists on all sides, everywhere, have been creating such a mess for so long, that maybe it's time for something naive.

Or doesn't that matter? It's all one side and to heck with looking at it from a different perpsective. Yep, it's all the big bad Israelis...and it doesn't matter who it is...they're all bad, while all Palestinians are victims. With this mindset there can't be a discussion.

Now see this wall?



Was this built by the Israelis? Nope...it's the southern border of the Gaza...a wall built and maintained by Egypt. And why? The Rafa checkpoint is still closed...not allowing either reporters or medical supplies in. This isn't Israel's decision, it's Egypt. So explain to me why this wall is there and why, under such duress, it remains closed.

Any blood is wrong...I don't care who it belongs to. I've long wanted a lasting peace in this region, but it requires two parties that want peace and to bargain in good faith. To blame it all on Israel without any accountablility of the Palestinians and other Arabs is both dishonest and highly biased...the mindset that has kept this ugly and sad situation roiling for over 70 years with no end in sight.

http://www.electronicintifada.net/bytopic/historicaldocuments.shtml

These are all the official documents from 1915 through 2007 - there have been no more official documents simply because of the United States declaring that the democratically-elected Hamas government was not acceptable. That the Arab League didn't declare war a second time at that point only points to the restraint for the past 60 years.

The Arab League declared war in 1948. Israel won the war. And apparently believed because they did that while they had the right to exist, Palestine did not. You can look at the map of the proposed partition of 1947 and the map of today. Israel has simply taken all the land promised to the Palestinians except for Gaza. And now they want that as well. It has nothing to do with Hamas. It has to do with Gaza.

The Zionists and their lobbyists, primarily AIPAC, have seen to it all these years that the American people only saw what they wanted them to see.

Now, finally, the American people can see it for themselves. In Gaza.

One reason why they can finally see it is because they saw it in Iraq and Afghanistan. The war on terror. We are the terrorists.

Simple question...but doubtful I'll get an answer...it doesn't fit the agenda.

As far as 1948...if the brother Arabs were so content on supporting a Palestinian state, why were the areas that were supposed to go for a Palestinian state were annexed to Jordan and Egypt? Or that the concept of a Palestinian state wasn't even mentioned in the UN for over 20 years. King Hussein could have granted independence to the West Bank prior to 1967...why didn't he? Again...questions that don't fit the agenda.

So the Arab League didn't declare war after they lost in 1948? I'd suggest you read up on the 1967 war and look at who participated. Then look at the speeches by Nasser about driving the "Jews into the sea" and the constant shelling (like today) of farming villages inside Israel. No...the American people don't see those things unless it blows up a marketplace or a wedding. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Again...dicussing this in a balanced way doesn't fit the agenda.

Now have you ever been to the region? Seen how small of an area it is and the people who inhabit it? You see a society that has lived under a state of war since 1948 (many say before). Speak to both Israelis and Palestinians and you'll hear a desire to live together...neither side can eliminate the other and are financially interdependent on one another. As long as there's a failed Palestinian state, there's a failed Israel and visa versa. Sadly, the politicians and the partisans on this issue see it only as an agenda...in black and white, rather than in real human terms.

The same Egypt constantly pressured by Israel and the US to shut down the tunnels through which Hamas is supposedly getting its weapons?

Please explain how the Egyptian dictatorship's willing participation in the slow and horrible strangulation of the 1.5 million prisoners of Gaza serves to justify Israel's periodic campaigns to bomb the people of the densely crowded territory from F-16s with cluster bombs, flechettes and phosphorus grenades, weapons under international law?

Your point is eluding me, I guess.

Do you a link that backs your assertion?

"The first 60-kilometer-long barrier erected between Israel and the Gaza Strip was constructed after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994, under the leadership of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. It was completed in 1996, but was largely torn down by Palestinians at the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
In the April 26, 1994 Draft Agreement on the Gaza Strip and Jericho Area, it states that "the security fence erected by Israel around the Gaza Strip shall remain in place and that the line demarcated by the fence, as shown on the map, shall be authoritative only for the purpose of the Agreement."
Between December 2000 and June 2001, the part of the barrier separating the Gaza Strip from Israel was reconstructed. A one-kilometer buffer zone was added, in addition to new high technology observation posts. Soldiers were also given new rules of engagement, which, according to Ha'aretz, allow soldiers to fire at anyone seen there at night. Palestinians attempting to cross the barrier into Israel by stealth have been shot and killed. Some have later been found without weapons.
Along the Egyptian border with Rafah, Israel established a 200-300 meter buffer zone known as the Philadelphi corridor. In order to construct this buffer zone, entire blocks of houses were demolished at the main entrance to Rafah's central thoroughway.
A concrete wall over eight metres high equipped with electronic sensors and underground concrete barriers to prevent tunneling was constructed in 2005."

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well I don't know how common they are in America; but still not super-typical I would think.

And they tend to be anti-Israel not on humanitarian grounds, but because America is 'entangled' with Israel, and would IMO become anti-Palestinian if the Palestinians ever have a state that needs/gets financial support from America.

I would agree that lots of people don't support the Israeli actions in Gaza.

the reddest part of Arkansas. And to my mind, that is rather telling. Even the local evangelicals who have said that we must support Israel to bring on the Rapture have been strangely silent about supporting this latest move by Israel.

and someone's bound to be a tad unhappy, if not a little enraged. On the other hand, the targeting of civilians by the Palestinians is a war crime in and of itself, so no one's hands are clean.

All they do is blame the other - never do they take any responsibility.

Though it is hard for the Palestinians - they don't have to agree with or hide terrorists to be subjected to being punished for it. That's Israel's repetitive excuse every time. They "have to" kill the Palestinians, because they are, well, Palestinians, and of the same ethnic group as those who plan the attacks and hide the attackers.

Sort of like how the Iraqis must die because you know, they are Iraqis, and of the same nationality as Saddam Hussein, who had WMDs, except that he didn't, and any and all Muslims are of the same religion as the 911 hijackers (can't expect the US to see any differences between Muslim groups) and therefore are the "enemy." Bush had us acting just like Israel.

world is anti-Semitic.

I watched Munich live on TV when I was a tweener. The airline hijackings were happening. Those times taught me that Israel is 100% right and the Palestinians are 100% wrong.

Well, many years -- and a lot of education -- radically expanded my view of the situation. I am one of those Americans who is increasingly unhappy with the path Israel is taking, to the point I am becoming politically active around it.

The PLO has since recognized Israel now, and the situation is reversed 180 degrees.

1. They want to make it as hard as possible to actually achieve peace in the future, no matter what the Obama administration tries to do
2. They can get away with it

That Likud faction doesn't want peace. They want land, water (one of the reasons behind the Lebanon invasion earlier) and total domination of the area. We can only hope that less aggressively hawkish faction takes power in the Likud as soon as can be.

http://jta.org/news/article/2009/01/06/1002014/dems-plan-pro-israel-resolution

Dems plan pro-Israel resolution
January 6, 2009

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Top Democrats are planning to introduce a non-binding congressional resolution supporting Israel's goal in its Gaza Strip operation.

U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the U.S. House of Representatives majority leader, told JTA he was looking at such a resolution, which is being drafted in the office of Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

-clip-

:wow:

the poster child for congressional term limits. Anybody else living in CA-28 know what it would take to get rid of this NAFTA/RIAA/MPAA/AIPAC whore?

Don't we have our names on enough bloodshed?

There certainly is blood on both side's hands:

The Israel response to the daily rockets is disproportional. The casualties on the Palestinian side are much larger and include a large number of civilians. The reported blockade of humanitarian aid is outrageous.

The Hamas importation of armaments, firing rockets into nearby Israel neighborhoods, and the tactic of positioning arms and fighters in such a way as to literally use innocents as a shield (and as a PR device after the fact) is also outrageous.

All that said, Israel is losing this particular PR war. Israel absolutely has a right to defend its citizens from random Rocket attacks and, yes, they repeatedly warned the Hamas government to put an end to those attacks. But their response has been so far beyond what was necessary for dealing with the threat, they are not standing on any moral high ground here.

They are the ones with overwhelming power and the ability to change the status quo of the situation, so they are the ones that need to maneuver to a cease fire sooner rather than later.

What EXACTLY would have been a proportional response?

Something less than a full scale invasion of Gaza and something that didn't kill more than 500 people and is still going on.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely believe that Hamas was in the wrong and that the indiscriminate rockets going into Israel had to be addressed. However, I believe Israel has gone so far that, as the cited polls suggest, they have hurt their support level with some of the American public. The longer this goes, the more the number of non-combatants killed rises, the worse that will be.

I am no different from anybody else in that I don't have the magic answer to that struggle. Unfortunately, it seems that to get elected (by either the Palestinians or the Israelis) you have to be a hard liner.

I do believe the upcoming Israel elections have as much to do with this level of response as anything else.

how about electricity, food, water, medicines --- ???

If I recall correctly, the current rockets killed 4 Israelis . . .

How many Gaza civilians are dead now -- wounded -- large numbers of children!

look at the responses to this New York Times editorial, especially when sorted in the order of "readers' recommendations."

http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/01/06/opinion/06tue1.html?s=3#comment425

Together with this one ...

The AIPAC agenda will prevail. :argh:

promote and protect Israel - that is what their response and history of statements and actions reveal. That's the way two and two add up. And we finally see it now with Hoyer, Pelosi, Reid and all the others. They are owned. It's the only way to explain it.

The neo-con agenda in the U.S. matches the neo-con agenda in Israel.

Things might be hopeless for us if we don't rip down the illusion of differences between the Repbus and Dems and if we don't see the neo-con agenda of perpetual war. There is no other way to reason it out.

AIPAC and the other powerfule organizations are above Congress on a heirarchial chart. They have become their own branch of government in the United States of America.

Directions are coming through them.

We must face the fact that we live under illusions of who is running things.

I always wonder how we can pretend to live within a framework of justice when we KNOW that there is no justice.
The system is broken. Working within a broken system is going to get us nowhere.

establishment is much more pro-Israel than the average guy on the street. It's just not apparently entirely OK to say so.

history didn't start last night. Probably no country ever has killed more innocents than this one and it isn't like that is some ancient history, I'm talking today. I don't see how we demand anyone do squat, as we are possibly the most appalling country ever, including Rome and Germany.

Get off your high horse and get your own country in order before acting like we have some moral position to speak out on how countries defend themselves. We've nuked people guys. Nuked people in a deliberate act of terrorism to save resources and our own blood. I support this in hindsight, even. Why? Because, I'm a nationalist that values my own people more than others. I rather nuke the Japanese than spill an extra drop of my countrymen's blood that could be saved by doing so.

I grant everyone else the same perspective.

You might also question why the deaths of innocent Israeli's is acceptable to Hamas but you already know that is their actual mission.
I'd wipe them out too. They are a threat.

Its odd that so many break their necks to defend theocratic fundamentalists that hate democratic values and secular society over a western democracy.

The US government alone prevented a Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli action in Gaza.

The US government has armed and financed Israel to the tune of $6 billion a year, billions every year for decades without fail. That's our tax money. Those are American planes doing the bombing.

The US corporate media alone is even more radically in support of the Israeli action than the Israeli media.

This is a US-backed invasion. Don't you come around with the dodge that US critics of US policy lack the moral standing to talk about a "foreign" country's action.

So you're right: the US has killed too many people, and it needs to stop killing them, including those it kills through its support for Israel.

Concerning protecting our Nation, I believe that explaining American Foreign Policy cannot not forget all of the Imperialistic ways our Nation has bee, nor the Tyranny of the Israeli Nation. There are many nations that have better Human Rights records than the US or Israel, so neither one of us should talk.

First off how many Israelis have been killed by the heartless and horrible rockets of Hamas compared to the more than 100 innocent Gazan lives that have been taken by the Israeli Military.

Finally, I fight, and fought for our nation. I have served my country, and I continue as a civilian to serve my nation.

I am against brutality, and I do not possess a belief of Necessary Evil, or Acceptable Losses, and I do not think that makes me naive.

Later...

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:thumbsup:

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and neither.

When people of different cultures, whether different religions or a particular religion and an atheist population, the closer they come to parity in numbers, the more inevitable it seems that hostility and conflict will ensue. And the longer it continues, the more hardened the attitudes of the rivals become. It virtually becomes bred in the bone.

Both sides in this conflict are now so inflamed, that when it seemed that the Palestinian leaders really wanted to call it a day, and co-exist in peace with the Israelis, I think that there were a significant mix of very mistrustful leaders and unconscionable hawks who really can't believe that the Palestinians were talking in good faith, and consequently dismissed the cease-fire, themselves, and continued to break it.

The same mix of the mistrustful and hawks have apparently been ratcheting up the persecution of the Palestinians remorselessly for such a long time, they don't see it as aberrant at all. Just self-defence. Maybe they're right. But I don't believe so. As a highly intelligent, empathetic leader, as well as an outsider, Obama may be the best chance the world will have, for a long time, of seeing peace restored in the Middle East. I expect Bill Clinton could be helpful. Wow. What a duo for empathy in leadership.