ScottN wrote: 
As long as, Goliath on the one hand is able to buy all the advanced weaponry cheaply (i.e. heavily subsidized) and has the blinkered sympathy from some powerful parties, it will continue to act callously (and not just "currently"), while David on the other, is consistently painted as a terrorist and denied the means to defend or live with dignity, then the answer to your last question is obviously no.

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
I'm sure it wasn't. It was probably done entirely lovingly...

 RichardPrins wrote: 
That was certainly not my intent in posting it.

 Red_Dragon wrote:
It may or may not be true, but in this particular context it's appearance is equally trite and trivial... If you have nothing to eat/drink, or risk being abused, bombed or killed day or night (wherever those circumstances might apply), love alone isn't going to get you very far. In either case you'll still perish unless, you take some action (and that doesn't necessarily imply violence) or are lucky enough to get help from someone.

 ScottN wrote: 

I have been observing, with interest and caring, the events between Israel and it's opposition for almost my whole life.  I am 65.
My prevailing feeling over time is of sadness and disappointment.  These two Semitic peoples cannot find a way to peace, and if not harmony, at least coexistence?

Israel is currently acting with cruelty and gratuitous disregard for the people of Gaza.  Some of its major opponents have pledged their lives to see Israel disappear.  Israel has within its own population a wide spectrum of "strategies for the road ahead".  The Palestinians have a deeply fractured "government" themselves.  The problems appear to be without a viable solution.  I so hope this is not true.

Is there a way out of this that allows Israel to exist in security, and also ends the suffering of the oppressed and occupied?

London

NBC reverses; Mohyeldin returns to Gaza to cover 'Palestinian side of story'

‘Are you a fucking leftist?’ –Israeli fascists target anti-occupation activists in Tel Aviv

Bipartisanship raised from the grave for that special occasion...
Bowing to AIPAC, Senate passes resolution supporting Israel
Though I tend to agree with Chomsky that the latter result is more likely caused by the far greater power of pervasive militarism than it is of AIPAC.

Israeli army launches ground invasion of Gaza Strip | +972 Magazine

NBC News Pulls Veteran Reporter from Gaza After Witnessing Israeli Attack on Children - The Intercept

(...) Despite this powerful first-hand reporting – or perhaps because of it – Mohyeldin was nowhere to be seen on last night’s NBC Nightly News broadcast with Brian Williams. Instead, as Media Bistro’s Jordan Chariton noted, NBC curiously had Richard Engel – who was in Tel Aviv, and had just arrived there an hour or so earlier – “report” on the attack. Charlton wrote that “the decision to have Engel report the story for ‘Nightly’ instead of Mohyeldin angered some NBC News staffers.”

Indeed, numerous NBC employees, including some of the network’s highest-profile stars, were at first confused and then indignant over the use of Engel rather than Mohyeldin to report the story. But what they did not know, and what has not been reported until now, is that Mohyeldin was removed completely from reporting on Gaza by a top NBC executive, David Verdi, who ordered Mohyeldin to leave Gaza immediately.

Over the last two weeks, Mohyeldin’s reporting has been far more balanced and even-handed than the standard pro-Israel coverage that dominates establishment American press coverage; his reports have provided context to the conflict that is missing from most American reports and he avoids adopting Israeli government talking points as truth. As a result, neocon and “pro-Israel” websites have repeatedly attacked him as a “Hamas spokesman” and spouting “pro-Hamas rants.”

Last week, as he passed over the border from Israel, he said while reporting that “you can understand why some human rights organizations call Gaza ‘the world’s largest outdoor prison,’”; he added: “One of the major complaints and frustrations among many people is that this is a form of collective punishment. You have 1.7 million people in this territory, now being bombarded, with really no way out.”

Gazans may have no way out of Gaza, but at this point, Mohyeldin seems to have no way back in. After several requests, NBC executives have not yet provided any on-the-record statements; they will be added if provided.

Israeli strike kills four Palestinian children playing soccer on Gaza beach | Mondoweiss
Four Young Boys Killed Playing on Gaza Beach - NYTimes.com

Four young Palestinian boys were killed Wednesday when two explosions hit a jetty and beach where they were playing at the fishing port of Gaza City, an area that had been considered relatively safe from the intense Israeli bombing campaign of the past nine days.

The Israel Defense Forces acknowledged that it had struck the area. “Based on preliminary results, the target of this strike was Hamas terrorist operatives,” the I.D.F. said in a statement. “The reported civilian casualties from this strike are a tragic outcome.”

The four boys were cousins in an extended family of fishermen who kept their boats at the port. (...)

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Playing With Ceasefires

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How US and Blair plotted ‘ceasefire’ scam | Jonathan Cook's Blog

We now have confirmation from the Israeli daily Haaretz of what we should have suspected: that the idea for the so-called Egyptian “ceasefire proposal” was actually hatched in Washington, the messenger boy was arch-war criminal Tony Blair, and the terms were drafted by Israel.

The intention was either to corner Hamas into surrendering – and thereby keep the savage blockade of Gaza in place – or force Hamas to reject the proposal and confirm the Israeli narrative that it is a terrorist organisation with which Israel cannot make peace.

According to Haaretz, Blair secretly initiated his “ceasefire” activity after “coordinating” with US Secretary of State John Kerry. On Saturday he headed off to Cairo to meet with the US-backed Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to persuade him to put his name to the proposal.

Immediately afterwards, he travelled to Israel to meet Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday afternoon. Sisi and Netanyahu were then supposed to thrash out the details. When they failed to do so, Blair intervened again on behalf of the Americans and the pair spoke by phone on Saturday evening.

Here’s the key paragraph from Haaretz:

Senior Israeli officials and Western diplomats said the reason the Egyptian cease-fire initiative was so short-lived is that it was prepared hastily and was not coordinated with all the relevant parties, particularly Hamas.

Wonderful that throw-away last line. In all this activity, it never occurred to the US, Blair, Sisi or Netanyahu – and no doubt Mahmoud Abbas, who is strangely absent from this account – that it might be necessary to sound out Hamas on the terms of a ceasefire it would need to abide by.

Now it seems Kerry is using US muscle to get Egypt, Qatar and Turkey to strong-arm Hamas into surrendering.

It’s depressingly predictable that the corporate media have swallowed the line of Israel accepting the “ceasefire proposal” and Hamas rejecting it. What Hamas did was reject a US-Israeli diktat to sign away the rights of the people of Gaza to end a siege that cuts them off from the rest of the world.

But there is a long pedigree to such deceptions. It is reminiscent of a hasbara favourite: that the Jews accepted the UN partition plan of 1947 while the Palestinians rejected it. The reality – then, as now – is that the the colonial powers sought to strip the Palestinians of their rights and their homeland without even consulting them.

 mutepoint wrote: 
The sincerest form.

 mutepoint wrote:

I guess you hate their freedom democracy...

 mutepoint wrote: 

The criticism of Israel at least from most objective, reasonable people is not the military response to these desperate, futile and relatively primitive attacks, but the perpetual, longterm treatment and occupation of the Palestinians homeland.   You think that they (Palestinians) just woke up one morning and decided that all Jews must die because they don't like the color blue?

 kurtster wrote: 
I guess that must be why this Islamic Resistance Movement killed so many in the US alone...

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How Politics and Lies Triggered an Unintended War in Gaza
Kidnap, Crackdown, Mutual Missteps and a Hail of Rockets

In the flood of angry words that poured out of Israel and Gaza during a week of spiraling violence, few statements were more blunt, or more telling, than this throwaway line by the chief spokesman of the Israeli military, Brigadier General Moti Almoz, speaking July 8 on Army Radio’s morning show: “We have been instructed by the political echelon to hit Hamas hard.”

That’s unusual language for a military mouthpiece. Typically they spout lines like “We will take all necessary actions” or “The state of Israel will defend its citizens.” You don’t expect to hear: “This is the politicians’ idea. They’re making us do it.”

Admittedly, demurrals on government policy by Israel’s top defense brass, once virtually unthinkable, have become almost routine in the Netanyahu era. Usually, though, there’s some measure of subtlety or discretion. This particular interview was different. Where most disagreements involve policies that might eventually lead to some future unnecessary war, this one was about an unnecessary war they were now stumbling into.

Spokesmen don’t speak for themselves. Almoz was expressing a frustration that was building in the army command for nearly a month, since the June 12 kidnapping of three Israeli yeshiva boys. The crime set off a chain of events in which Israel gradually lost control of the situation, finally ending up on the brink of a war that nobody wanted — not the army, not the government, not even the enemy, Hamas.

The frustration had numerous causes. Once the boys’ disappearance was known, troops began a massive, 18-day search-and-rescue operation, entering thousands of homes, arresting and interrogating hundreds of individuals, racing against the clock. Only on July 1, after the boys’ bodies were found, did the truth come out: The government had known almost from the beginning that the boys were dead. It maintained the fiction that it hoped to find them alive as a pretext to dismantle Hamas’ West Bank operations.

The initial evidence was the recording of victim Gilad Shaer’s desperate cellphone call to Moked 100, Israel’s 911. When the tape reached the security services the next morning — neglected for hours by Moked 100 staff — the teen was heard whispering “They’ve kidnapped me” (“hatfu oti”) followed by shouts of “Heads down,” then gunfire, two groans, more shots, then singing in Arabic. That evening searchers found the kidnappers’ abandoned, torched Hyundai, with eight bullet holes and the boys’ DNA. There was no doubt.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately placed a gag order on the deaths. Journalists who heard rumors were told the Shin Bet wanted the gag order to aid the search. For public consumption, the official word was that Israel was “acting on the assumption that they’re alive.” It was, simply put, a lie.

Moti Almoz, as army spokesman, was in charge of repeating the lie. True, others backed him up, including Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon. But when the truth came out on July 1, Almoz bore the brunt of public derision. Critics said his credibility was shot. He’d only been spokesman since October, after a long career as a blunt-talking field commander with no media experience. Others felt professional frustration. His was personal. (...)

 RichardPrins wrote: 
Meh ... it won't be long anyway.  Hamas' missiles can now reach 80% of Israel with new upgrades.  

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, I knew that would be coming.  But just to be clear, Hamas is not fighting for freedom, they are fighting for the annihilation of Jews worldwide. 

One thing has changed though, for the first time in my life, the price of oil has not risen during a Middle Eastern brouhaha.  Let em duke it out.  The US is not responsible for the situation over there.  That responsibility belongs to the Brits who dumped the Jews there in the first place as they also set borders in Iraq, and so on and so forth.  Heck, we can even blame the Brits for the creation of the super monster of the world, the United States ...

My real concern lies at the US southern border where we have an invasion under way. 

 kurtster wrote:
“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” ~ Malcolm X

You should know by now what happens in occupied lands, seeing the recent history of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan et al., or by the drone attacks of your homie Obama. Lots of innocents gets killed.

It's convenient to label those that politically disagree and resist as terrorists and then blow them to bits (except of course when they're fighting your enemy, then the very same people are freedom fighters and get funded).

Cowards are the jingoistic and militaristic people who call for war/genocide from the comfort of their armchairs, and who let others make the sacrifices, while benefiting themselves...

And/or also:

As usual, the propaganda war between Israel and the Palestinians over civilian casualties goes like this: Palestinians accuse Israel of deliberately targeting civilians, while Israel blames the deaths and injuries on Hamas and other militant groups for using the civilian population as “human shields.”

But the Palestinians’ accusation against Israel is false, while the Israeli claim against the Palestinians is partly false, partly true, but basically misleading. The main reason for the high number of Palestinian civilian casualties, obviously, is that an incredibly powerful air force is bombing the hell out of one of the most crowded, vulnerable places in the world – and the fault for that lies with Israel, whose punitive, often lethal blockade of Gaza, together with its military occupation of the West Bank, invites Palestinians to fight back. As in all its wars with the Palestinians since 1967, Israel is the aggressor in Operation Protective Edge.

But while the Israeli Air Force’s assault guarantees that a high proportion of civilians in Gaza are going to get killed and maimed, that’s not because of the air force’s efforts in this respect, but despite them. TIME Magazine’s Karl Vick wrote on Thursday:

Compared with any other military, (Israel’s) armed forces take exceptional care to avoid civilian casualties. If a house is going to be bombed, a call is placed to it announcing this fact, and explicitly warning civilians to get out. A pilot might also drop a “door-knocker” on the roof — a nonlethal sound bomb also intended to announce an impending attack. The real bomb that’s then loosed on the target is often a munition, sometimes quite small, specifically selected to contain damage to the target and spare the neighbors.

The problem is not that the Israeli army is unusually brutal, as armies go; if anything, the opposite is the case. The problem – in Gaza and the West Bank, now and before – is that the IDF is a colonial army, which is an inherently brutal role, one that other armies were ordered by their governments to give up decades ago.

About Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other armed groups using Gazan civilians as “human shields.” This Israeli claim is based on the fact that Gazan militants live among the civilian population and keep much of their weaponry in the neighborhoods. But this is hypocrisy; every guerrilla army that fights on its own turf against an incomparably stronger enemy fights from among the civilian population. The pre-1948 Irgun and Lehi guerrillas would kill the British, then “melt back” into the Jewish neighborhoods. In Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan, there are civilian public buildings – including schools – with plaques at the entrance telling how they housed weapons caches and training camps for the Irgun, Lehi or Haganah. Up through Israel’s War of Independence, the kibbutzim were military outposts as much as they were civilian settlements.

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
*bump*

 RichardPrins wrote: 

If you're trying to destroy missile launchers, you're going to target their location.

Maybe Israel wouldn't be killing so many children if Hamas did not launch their missiles from schools, hospitals and mosques, hiding behind women's burkas and children.

Let's see if we agree on this one ?   Terrorists by their very nature and mission are cowards.