'Hizbullah committing war crimes'
Hizbullah must immediately stop firing rockets into civilian areas in Israel, Human Rights Watch said Saturday. "Lobbing rockets blindly into civilian areas is without doubt a war crime," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
"Nothing can justify this assault on the most fundamental standards for sparing civilians the hazards of war."
"Most of the attacks appear to have been directed at civilian areas and have hit pedestrians, hospitals, schools, homes and businesses," the humanitarian organization's website stated. (Source: Jerusalem Post)
Diplomacy Wasn't the Root Cause
I don't believe in every snippet of news in the current Israeli-Hezbollah-Hamas war, but taken as a group these stories might indicate a change of attitude among Israel's foes:
Syria wants talks with US over Lebanon crisis
I know, there have been denials, but I have this gut feeling that even Islamist terrorists ultimately understand the side effects of severe punishment.
Anyway, if proven true, diplomacy - so cherished by the German media - definitely wasn't the root cause for these headlines...
Addendum from Ray: SPIEGEL ONLINE has finally published its pro-Israel "token" commentary by Matthias Kuentzel. A must read (in German). (Hattip: Hans Ze Beeman). Politically Incorrect points to a poll taken several days ago showing that 75% of Germans find Israel's actions "inappropriate" while only 12% see them as "appropriate" and 13% aren't sure. Is that any surprise considering the tone of the German media?
(Via Politically Incorrect) The lady in the "EU limo" says: "How disproportionate! They won't do anything if you leave them in peace! Total overreaction! You are only going to make them wilder!" The cartoon title (at the bottom) says: Theoretical know-it-all-ism from a climate-controlled backseat.
It would be interesting to see how Germans (and other Israel critics) would react if we huddled them all into a piece of land the size of New Jersey, surrounded them with enemies loudly calling and working for their utter destruction, subjected them to regular bus and subway bombings and kidnappings and rocket attacks, and then had the rest of the international community repeatedly tell them how wrong they were to defend themselves. Maybe a few more might find Israel's actions "appropriate" with the shoe on the other foot. It certainly is easy to criticize from the relative comfort of a European armchair...
An Israeli Soldier's Opinion
This is a letter from a young Israeli soldier to his mother. I got a copy of it as a member of Naomi Ragen's e-mail list.
I strongly urge you to read the letter to get an understanding of the Israeli-Hezbollah-Hamas conflict. I was particularly impressed by the description of Israel's "don't shoot first" policy:
Do you know why so manysoldiers die in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon? Not because the enemy's army is better, they are not even close to the IDF. We have better equipment, more equipment, better training, so how is it that soldiers are kidnapped and killed? That's a good question. It is because the left and the international community is keeping such a close look, and bias toward Israel's defense tactics, that are (sic!) hands are tied in defending ourselves properly. We take so many dangerous steps in order to protect civilians, that in return, we are killed and kidnapped. Did you know that at the Lebanon Border for the last ten years, because of "International" pressure, that if you see 500 Hizbollah terrorists with AK47's and rocket launchers and missiles coming up to the actual border fence, 50 feet from the Israel soldiers, 50 feet from Israel's soil, that the IDF cannot fire unless they fire first! They can aim, set up shop 50 feet from you, but until they fire and shoot at you, the Israeli soldiers cannot defend themselves. Is that logical? No, it is insane. The only reason why so many Israeli's both civilian and military are dying is explicitly the fault of the International Leftist agenda. The Left likes to see the minority win, even if it is Hamas and Hezbollah.
Again, you have to read the whole letter.
Notes from Zachary Taylor a soldier in the Nachal Haredi Unit, sent to me (Naomi Ragen) by his mother.
People jump to conclusions about the Israeli leadership and their strategies concerning Gaza and Lebanon. First of all, do not believe anything you read in a foreign newspaper or even half of the Israeli ones about this current situation.
For example, just a few months ago an Arab Family in Gaza was killed on a beach. The Palestinians said the Israelis did the killing, as did international media. After research it was shown that in no way whatsovever was it an Israeli...
Jeffrey Gedmin: Responding on Two Fronts
Jeffrey Gedmin has published another one of his brilliant attacks against the hypocrisy of the left in Germany's daily WELT. We are glad to have obtained the right to publish the original English version of his commentary.
Responding on Two Fronts
By Jeffrey Gedmin (Tel Aviv)Sitting in a beach front restaurant at the port here and life seems so normal, innocent really. The warm summer breeze, music, fresh fish, scores of young people walk the board walk. And on this night, every few minutes, military planes fly by, flying north. Israel is at war again.
I'm learning a lot about rockets at the moment. The Katyuscha has a range of 30-40 km. The Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 can sail some 70 km. When I arrived, I was briefed that Hezbollah may also have a number of longer range Iranian missiles with a reach of about 135 km. That would make Tel Aviv a possible target, I thought. Two days ago Israel found and destroyed an Iranian Zelzal missile with a range of 160 kilometers.
As always, I'm a little bit one-sided. A frequent narrative in much international media goes like this: Hezbollah kidnaps two Israeli soldiers. Israel seeks revenge by bombing the hell out of Lebanon. A Süddeutsche Zeitung headline read, "Israel attack on two fronts." Henryk Broder, writing in Der Spiegel, asked why the paper wouldn't have written that Israel has been "responding" on two fronts. That would be honest.
I feel pretty confident about my narrative. Start with Gaza, which is where this started. Israel withdraws. Palestinians heave 600 rockets over the border over the next six months. They elect Hamas, whose raison etre is to annihilate the Jewish state. Hamas
Source: Cox & Forkum (Cartoon is not part of Jeffrey Gedmin's commentary in WELT)
ups the ante by kidnapping an Israeli soldier. A journalists friend says to me, a liberal-minded fellow here, "If you keep poking a lion, sooner or later you're going to get swatted by a big paw." Now Lebanon. Before nabbing those Israeli soldiers, Hezbollah had started to fire their own rockets into
Continue reading "Jeffrey Gedmin: Responding on Two Fronts" »
Israel a Terrorist State?
This commentary in Berliner Zeitung pretty much presents all the major prejudices in the German media against Israel in the current conflict with Hamas.
In effect, it paints Israel as a terrorist state.
Rocket PoliticsEntire rows of houses are smashed down by (Israeli) tanks to make sure that there is at least one guilty party among the many casualties. Terrorism, the strengthening of one's own position through the spread of fear and horror, is the long standing practice of both sides. (...) The war against terrorism has, within the briefest period, itself assumed terroristic traits. (...)He who would like the Palestinians to have a democratically elected government commits himself to their capacity to vote freely and anonymously. When they have decided, he must, if one is to believe in his commitment to democratic engagement, recognize the representatives elected in free, secret elections. (...)Israel wants to unseat the first government that the Palestinians themselves have elected. The Israeli government claims a right of veto in the occupancy of the Palestinian government bench. A right of veto which she is prepared to enforced with bombs and rockets. Those who know Hamas will appreciate this. But that has nothing to do with democracy. It shows solely the disregard of the Israeli leadership not just for the will of the Palestinians, but also for democratic institutions. (emphasis added)
(Translation of quote by Richard Bartholomew)
Adolf Hitler would have agreed wholeheartedly with this commentary. After all, you have to "recognize" even a warmongering government, if only it's democratically elected. And Hitler was democratically elected. So, sorry Israel, there's nothing you can do about Palestinian terror. Sure, the Hamas government wants to eradicate Israel from the face of the earth. But what can you do - the government was democratically elected.
As to "terrorist traits" in the fight against terror, how exactly is Israel supposed to defend itself against hundreds of Kassam rockets, suicide bombers, abductions, and other goodies delivered from Palestine territory, with the tacid - and not so tacid - approval of the Hamas government? Asking for mercy? Well, the Jews did that in the face of the Nazi terror, and, back then, it didn't quite work out...
The German media might learn from some Arab media how to identify the true culprit in this conflict:
The Hamas leadership was taken to task in an op-ed piece published Saturday in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Watan, Israel Radio reported.
The author, Fuad al Hashen, wrote that Hamas bore full responsibility for the recent IDF incursion into the Gaza Strip.
Hamas continued to fire rockets at Israel after Israel voluntarily withdrew from Gaza, al Hashen continued. Therefore, Israel's decision to shell Gaza was "natural."
Al Hashen called on leaders in the Hamas movement to concern themselves with rebuilding Gaza and address the real issues for the Palestinian people. "Then the 'Summer Rain' will stop falling," he wrote.
BTW, I haven't heard the German media cry for Cpl. Gilad Shalit to have access to a lawyer and a court hearing. No mention of the Geneva Convention, no complaints about the lawlessness of the Palestinian government.
I guess the silence is owed to the fact that Cpl. Shalit is not an Islamic terrorist who was trying to blow up a maximum number of civilians, but just an ordinary Israeli soldier who cared for the right of his people to live in peace. Obviously, this doesn't qualify him for a special treatment in the German media...
This cartoon from Dry Bones is a fitting description of the twisted Palestinian logic...
Update: While the German media endlessly repeat the "cycle of violence" crap, Iraqis are surprisingly candid about the responsibilty of Hamas. Then again, they know the meaning of terrorism...
"Paradise Now": The Human Face of Terrorists
A while ago we commented on the anti-Semitic movie "Paradise Now", which is co-financed by German authorities. Also, we mentioned that the script of "Paradise now" is in the race for a German award.
I just came across an interview of an Austrian newspaper (Wiener Zeitung) with the movie's film director, Hany Abu-Assad. He is clearly an apologist of suicide bombers, despite his "I am against suicide attacks" rhethoric. I guess the award for "Paradise Now" is a given...
„Wiener Zeitung“: What was your opinion of suicide attackers before and after the film?
Hany Abu-Assad: Before I thought that assassins were uneducated religious fanatics who’d been brainwashed. While researching for the film though, I’ve discovered a human face bit by bit. Behind every assassin is an individual story – here a Palestinian woman whose husband was killed by the Israelis, there a Palestinian whose house was destroyed by the Israeli army.
What unites the assassins is their resistance to the occupation and extreme hopelessness. They have the feeling that no matter what they do, Israel gets the upper hand. Even though I disagree with the suicide attacks, I don’t condemn them. For me suicide attacks are a human reaction to an extreme situation. Once again: I am personally against the killing – whether for reasons of resistance or military strikes. (...)
„Wiener Zeitung“: Do you suppose that the Palestinians’ situation would have been better if there had been no suicide attacks in Israel.
Hany Abu-Assad: No. . . (corrects himself) . . I’m not sure. Anyway it’s clear that suicide attacks are a reaction. Israel says that it is the victim and accuses the Palestinians of being terrorists. That drives the Palestinians crazy. If they’d just recognize us as equal citizens, the conflict would resolve itself. (emphasis added)
Last time in history the Jews accepted their killers as "equals", reality didn't have a happy ending for them...
(Translation of quote by Richard Bartholomew.)
Update: One of the main reasons why we run this blog is the phantastic input by our readers. Like the comment below by "The Editrix" where parallels between Mr. Abu-Assad's enlightening remarks and this wonderful satire in "The Onion" are shown. Enjoy!
Crazed Palestinian Gunman Angered By Stereotypes
HEBRON, WEST BANK—In an emotionally charged press conference Monday, crazed Palestinian gunman Faisal al Hamad expressed frustration over the stereotyping of his people.
"As a crazed Palestinian gunman, I feel hurt by the negative portrayal of my people in the media," said al Hamad, 31, a Hebron-area terrorist maniac. "None of us should have to live with stereotyping and ignorance."
He then began screaming and firing into a busload of Israeli schoolchildren.
"It hurts that in this supposedly enlightened day and age, people still make assumptions about other people," al Hamad said. "We should not rely on simple generalizations. Each crazed Palestinian gunman is an individual." (...)
Al Hamad said that he himself has often been unfairly stereotyped. "Any time I enter a crowded temple with fully loaded AK-47s in both hands, people just assume I'm going to open fire," he said. "That really hurts."
"Yes, I sometimes do gun people down in the name of the One True God," he noted. "But there is so much more to me." (...)
According to al Hamad, stereotypes against crazed Palestinian gunmen don't work because they don't take into account the vast variety of proud histories and diverse cultures among them.
"There are so many different kinds of crazed Palestinian gunmen. Each of us has our own unique reasons and motivations for our bus bombings and suicide missions," he said. "No two fundamentalist agendas are alike."
Al Hamad also stressed the importance of understanding and celebrating the cultural differences between crazed Palestinian gunmen and non-crazed, non-Palestinian non-gunmen.
"All the different peoples of the world have something special to offer each other," he said. "Our diversity is our greatest strength. Let's not make a weakness out of that strength."
To emphasize his point, al Hamad fired into a crowd, killing nine.
"I'm proud to be a crazed Palestinian gunman, obviously," he said in between shouts of anti-imperialist slogans. "But I'm an individual first. I'm me. Die, Yankee infidel pig swine!"
Faisal al Hamad, seen here shrieking anti-U.S.
slogans, says that "not every crazed Palestinian
gunman is exactly alike."
Hey Jews, don't you see? All you have to do is to recognize the terrorists as "equal citizens".
"Paradise Now": Anti-Semitic Movie Co-Financed by German Authorities
In an earlier post, I published excerpts of a critical review of the film “Paradise Now” from the daily newspaper WELT and lent my support to the critique. I have to admit that I hadn’t seen the film myself at that time.
I’ve now corrected this. It was a terrible experience.
“Paradise Now” is the first openly anti-Semitic film I’ve seen in the German cinema. Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of the numerous Germans who collaborated in its production (the film is distributed by Constantin Film/Munich). He would have praised in glowing terms the fact that the German taxpayer ponied up an essential contribution to the production costs. The materials for discussion of the film in German schools authored by a federal authority from the Central Office for Political Education (BPB) would have met with his grinning approval.
Our first posting dealt with the plot. In summary, young Palestinian men gratefully accept a command from a Palestinian terror group (my interpretation, not the film’s) to assassinate Israelis in Tel Aviv. After a few false starts one of the men carries out the assassination – a suicide attack in a bus.
The film’s action, especially the dialogs and discussions between the main characters, portrays the conflict between two positions. First position:
The Israelis are criminal occupiers who oppress the Palestinians. They must be combated with assassination and force.
Second position:
The Israelis are criminal occupiers who oppress the Palestinians. They must be combated with peace activists’ non-violent demonstrations.
The film leaves open which of the two positions is the right one. The only thing certain in the film is the guilt and malice of the Israelis, the “occupiers”. It’s not worth going into detail about the film’s striking polemics against the Israelis. No attempt is undertaken anywhere in the film to explain the Israelis’ position. Almost all of the Israelis appear in the film as soldiers - intimidating, menacing, anonymous, occasionally with sadistic impulses.
While the Palestinians, without exception in the German version, speak at length in flawless German, there’s only one place in the whole film where an Israeli speaks a sentence - German, but with an unpleasant accent.
Of all things, this one Israeli with at least a minimal script presence had to inveigh against his fellow citizens’ wealth – a character quirk from the Nazis’ anti-Semitic films with which older Germans will be quite familiar.
(Click on pic to enlarge)Instructing a Palestinian suicide bomber how to
kill Jews. Scene from a film co-financed by German authorities.
The film expresses no moral criticism of the Palestinian suicide attackers’ practice of murdering Israeli civilians. The only thing under dispute is whether suicide attacks actually weaken the “occupiers”. In one of the film’s most ridiculously revisionist scenes, the main character shrinks from the bomb attack
Continue reading ""Paradise Now": Anti-Semitic Movie Co-Financed by German Authorities" »
The Debate
- "In much of Europe's public debate, the true meaning of human rights has degenerated into a tool that gives anti-Americanism an aura of legitimacy. The real, horrendous human-rights violations in the Middle East, North Korea, China, Cuba, etc., are largely ignored or relegated to news blurs on the back pages. For front-page coverage, you need an American angle." ---The Wall Street Journal
- "I discovered that European social democracy, too, was a kind of fundamentalism, rigid and doctrinaire, yielding what Swedish writer Johan Norberg calls "one-idea states"—nations where an echo chamber of insular elites calls the shots, where monochrome media daily reiterate statist mantras and shut out contrarian views, and where teachers and professors systematically misrepresent the U.S. (millions of Europeans believe that free public schools, unemployment insurance, and pensions are unknown in America). The more I saw of the European elites' chronic distrust of the public, and the public's habitual deference to those elites, the fonder I grew of the nasty, ridiculous rough-and-tumble of American democracy..." ---Bruce Bawer
- "In the European media as well as on the public stage, prizes and publicity go overwhelmingly to Americans who serve as witnesses against their own government and nation. (...) The defense mechanism is simple enough: "After all, they are saying this, too, so how can we be accused of anti-Americanism?" A similar phenomenon attaches itself to Israel, where "post-" or anti-Zionist spokesmen are given top billing in the European media." ---Josef Joffe
- "The point is to be aware that for many of the foreigners issuing what they claim to be "simply constructive criticism", the evidence shows that criticizing America is all they do, criticizing America is all they ever have done, and criticizing America is all they ever will do." ---Erik Svane, Americans Anonymous
- "To get an impression, take a look at David's Medienkritik, a Web log in English dedicated, among other things, to exposing biased reporting on the United States in the German media. Be it stories about the war in Iraq, the conduct of U.S. soldiers abroad, American reservations regarding the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court or even the Katrina disaster, more often than not the German public is presented with a distorted picture. There are laudable exceptions. But generally the blows are low, and the public is left to form its opinion base on half-truths and false analyses." ---Julian Knapp
- "Negative sentiments and views have been driven not only - or even primarily - by what the United States does, but rather by an animus against what Europeans have believed that America is. While the politics, style, and discourse of the Bush terms - and of President Bush as a person - have undoubtedly exacerbated anti-American sentiment among Europeans and fostered a heretofore unmatched degree of unity between elite and mass opinion in Europe, they are not anti-Americanism's cause. Indeed, a change to a center-left administration in Washington, led by a Democratic president, would not bring about its abatement, let alone its disappearance." ---Andrei Markovits
- "Anti-Americanism is hypocrisy at its finest. You can spend your evening catching the latest episode of "24" and then complain about Guantanamo the next morning. You can claim that the Americans have themselves to blame for terrorism, while at the same time calling for tougher restrictions on Muslim immigration to Germany. You can call the American president a mass murderer and book a flight to New York the next day. You can lament the average American's supposed lack of culture and savvy and meanwhile send off for the documents for the Green Card lottery. Not a day passes in Germany when someone isn't making the wildest claims, hurling the vilest insults or spreading the most outlandish conspiracy theories about the United States. But there's no risk involved and it all serves mainly to boost the German feeling of self-righteousness." ---C.C. Malzahn
- "The protests against nuclear weapons, for instance, concentrated on American weapons. The anti-war rallies were against American-led wars. The anti death penalty campaign focused on Texas. A pattern was emerging and has never seriously been altered. A pattern of willingness to condemn America for the tiniest indiscretion - or to magnify those indiscretions - while leaving the murderers, dictators, and thieves who run other nations oddly untouched." ---Justin Webb
- The fundamental role of anti-Americanism in Europe in general, and particularly among those on the Left, is to absolve themselves of their own moral failings and intellectual errors by heaping them onto the monster scapegoat, the United States of America. For stupidity and bloodshed to vanish from Europe, the U.S. must be identified as the singular threat to democracy (contrary to every lesson of actual history)." ---Jean-François Revel
- "In five years there will be a different President and Iraq will likely be pacified. That would naturally have impacts on the strength of the resentments that have fixed themselves onto certain individuals in the present situation. But beneath the surface smolder the long-burning embers of latent anti-Americanism. It has a long tradition and will remain, also when President Bush is no longer in office and Palestine is peaceful." ---Lutz Erbring
- "A writer for the German weekly Der Spiegel told me during the Iraq debate not to take offense at the crude anti-American covers of the magazine such as the ugly, bearded, drooling Rambo figure it used to show the typical GI in Iraq. 'We're just trying to please our million readers,' he explained." ---Jeff Gedmin
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