Rudderless Invasions: Wasted Lives and Opportunities

Guest Post by Temporal who blogs at Baithak

A Palestinian woman with severe facial injuries from a Dime bombIsrael has agreed to another unilateral ceasefire – like Sharon did in Lebanon – to be broken at will some time in the future.

The costs are well known:

  • Over 1200 dead Palestinians a majority of them civilians.
  • Billions of dollars worth of infrastructure destroyed
  • US arms used
  • Banned substances used
  • It failed in its state objective to crush Hamas

Israel was facing demands for war crimes investigations as it declared a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza last night after a 22-day assault in which more than 1,200 Palestinians, a third of them children, were killed and 13 Israelis died. Erik Fosse, a Norwegian doctor who worked in Gaza’s hospitals during the conflict, said that Israel was using so-called Dime (dense inert metal explosive) bombs designed to produce an intense explosion in a small space. The bombs are packed with tungsten powder, which has the effect of shrapnel but often dissolves in human tissue, making it difficult to discover the cause of injuries. Raymond Whitaker


Livini in DC and Ohlmert in Tel Aviv are “sorry” for civilian dead. Michael Bell, former Canadian Ambassador to Israel writes:

Israel will hold a general election on Feb. 10. Most polls show that the right-wing Likud opposition leader and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to come to power. A weak-willed reaction … would have opened the governing coalition’s departing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the Kadima Party’s new leader, and, most of all, Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister and Leader of the formerly dominant Labour Party, to devastating criticism and their portrayal as leaders unable to safeguard their country’s most basic interests. Inaction would have meant humiliation for Mr. Olmert, electoral defeat for Ms. Livni and the end of Mr. Barak’s political career.

Israeli elections are round the corner. Barak and Livni hope to milk this Gaza Invasion to upset Bibi Nethanyahu (another corruption tainted Israeli politician.)

Unless Israel mindset is changed peace will remain an anathema. We desis can understand it too well. The “mindset” that we are familiar with in India and Pakistan that breeds suspicion and inculcates enmity.

The first step required to change the mindset is to shed the victim-mentality. The Israeli enemy is extinct. They should not replace and replicate the failed Nazi tactics. They have to learn to live with dignity and resilience – the same resilience they showed in the face of holocaust. And extend the same dignity and respect to the Palestinians under their occupation.

Over 400 UK writers, professors, intellectuals wrote:

The massacres in Gaza are the latest phase of a war that Israel has been waging against the people of Palestine for more than 60 years. The goal of this war has never changed: to use overwhelming military power to eradicate the Palestinians as a political force, one capable of resisting Israel’s ongoing appropriation of their land and resources. Israel’s war against the Palestinians has turned Gaza and the West Bank into a pair of gigantic political prisons. There is nothing symmetrical about this war in terms of principles, tactics or consequences. Israel is responsible for launching and intensifying it, and for ending the most recent lull in hostilities…Israel must accept that its security depends on justice and peaceful coexistence with its neighbours, and not upon the criminal use of force. We believe Israel should immediately and unconditionally end its assault on Gaza, end the occupation of the West Bank, and abandon all claims to possess or control territory beyond its 1967 borders. We call on the British government and the British people to take all feasible steps to oblige Israel to comply with these demands, starting with a programme of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

Never Again should mean never again the ethnic cleansing, ghettoising, discrimination and apartheid would be exercised against others in Israel and it occupied territories.

The world can and should help too.

For a start, the US under Obama should launch a Obama or Clinton Muslim Recovery Plan (a la Marshall Plan) to help the fringe Muslim States.

Hope, not of the divine kind, is awol there. Economic upliftment would counter the zealots appeal more effectively than use of force and threat. The oil rich Arab states can be cajoled, co-opted or persuaded to join this plan.

The Muslims intelligentsia also has to stand up and help shape the opinion in their countries. The eunuchs (hegiRas) of the Muslim world should be exposed for what they are – the Mubaraks, the Sauds, the Abdullahs, the Asads should be exposed for their impotency and incompetency.

The one lesson that is obvious and obviously unlearned by Israel is that force is not the solution. The same lesson should be learned by the Palestinians in the occupied lands and in the diaspora.


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7 responses to “Rudderless Invasions: Wasted Lives and Opportunities”

  1. Sikander Hayat Avatar

    To read more about developments in Pakistan and areas around it, please go to
    http://real-politique.blogspot.com

  2. Anwar Avatar
    Anwar

    Demands for war crimes will fizzle out as it is the “White Man” who has done the mischief…. Problem is that this war was supported by Egypt and Saudi Arabia as both countries wanted to punish Hamas for getting moral support from Iran.
    What is interesting is that Arab Telethon has already collected over 500 million dollars for reconstruction. The amount spent by Arabs on reconstruction of Lebanon exceeded a billion dollars. I am of the view that the US and Europeans have found a new method of milking money from these idiots.

  3. shy-guY Avatar
    shy-guY

    In Koran Allah said to Jews that you'd do mischief on earth twice and and you will become tyrants and extremely arrogant who continue worshiped Baal and Moloch doctrine.

    Jews are dirt of the earth except those who accepted Jesus as their true Messiah holds 20% of Jews population rest are gone astray and transgressors.

    Where ever they stayed in their diaspora they spoiled that nation their race and religion as well.

    God's "chosen people" have been Satan's favorite targets. Zionists took control of them using Lies about the Holocaust and the 1948 War of Independence

    As long as I know there's Hadith which says that you Muslims will do the same as Jewish did before you after passing me.

    And I know the 1st punishment began of Allah when colonial cabal enchained us in their trap when most Muslim leaders turned secular-eunuchs and slave of west.

    2nd torment is going on in shape of war on terror and Israel assault on Gaza. We've drop divine robe which tighten us against evil rather we hold avarice rope which lead us towards Armageddon.

    We all must repent and take 180 degree turn before burn in hell because WE live in a world governed by megalomaniac criminals, traitors, imposters, perverts CONVERSO who employ a corrupt media, political and cultural elite to hide and justify their misdeeds.

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-22190262

  4. Ahmed Kamal Avatar
    Ahmed Kamal

    For each of these Arab states, Hamas represents a force that could stir the social pot at home — either by creating a backlash against the regimes for their ties to Israel and their perceived failure to aid the Palestinians, or by emboldening democratic Islamist movements in the region that could threaten the stability of both republican regimes and monarchies. With somewhat limited options to contain Iranian expansion in the region, the Arab states ironically are looking to Israel to ensure that Hamas remains boxed in. So, while on the surface it may seem that the entire Arab world is convulsing with anger at Israel’s offensive against Hamas, a closer look reveals that the view from the Arab palace is quite different from the view on the Arab street.

    http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090107_hamas_and_arab_states

    May Allah help us!

  5. Ahmed Kamal Avatar
    Ahmed Kamal

    The previous post has given highest of the idiotic reasons I have seen until now.

  6. Asad Ali Avatar
    Asad Ali

    @ yes, the author is an Israeli zionist arshole calling

    himself God or ELOHIM, he or she is not even worth

    answering but I have put him or her on the right place.

  7. Ahmed Kamal Avatar
    Ahmed Kamal

    Please be careful in writing comments.

    They can say anything but the truth is the whole American military machine and Israel terrorism is unable to fight so called “Backward Muslims”, who are not even united. Beware when they become one.

    This is what they call surgical strikes.

    http://www.elfarra.org/gallery/gaza.htm

    And for any Israeli who need killing innocent people to live happily.

    Hitler Interview in the New York Staatszeitung, 1933.

    “Why does the world shed crocodile’s tears over the richly merited fate of a small Jewish minority? … I ask Roosevelt, I ask the American people: Are you prepared to receive in your midst these well-poisoners of the German people and the universal spirit of Christianity? We would willingly give everyone of them a free steamer-ticket and a thousand-mark note for travelling expenses, if we could get rid of them.” (Quoted in N H Baynes, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, Oxford University Press, 1942, Volume I, pp.727-28)

    And the truth is no one wanted them on their soil so they pushed them to Palestine!

    http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/statements.htm