Israel Invades Gaza: What You Need to Know

WHAT'S GOING ON?

Hamas (which does not equal "the men, women and children of Gaza")... piss off Israelis with their evil terrorist tactics and they tell the people who are walled into the ghetto and getting the crap blown out of them by Israelis that it's the Zionists who are killing and starving their kids. When your kids all die while they are sitting in geography class because an Israel shell blew the flesh off their bones, that's a fairly plausible take on things. So Palestinians rally round Hamas. What conceivable reason have they to trust Israelis?

Mark Shea
Catholic and Enjoying It!, 6th January 2009

WHAT DOES ISRAEL REALLY WANT?

Does it really believe it can stop the rocket fire from Gaza when previous Israeli governments have tried and failed, using every military means?

[...]

Israel's politicians are pursuing a parallel campaign, too - an electoral one... The Israeli public has a generally low opinion about how their government has handled what they call "Hamastan" - Hamas-controlled Gaza. Until it started talking tough, the hawkish opposition leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, was leading in the polls. Now the gap has narrowed.

Katya Adler
BBC News, 27th December 2008

WHAT WILL HAPPEN?

What we’re talking about here, what the IDF has in mind, is more what the Romans called “decimation”: killing enough of the right people to make Hamas weak for five or ten years, which may, just may, be long enough to give Israel’s allies the PLO/Fatah the edge in the Palestinian Civil War. That’s what this is about, getting your guys to win that war.

Will it work? Depends on the time frame. For a few years, yes; in the long run, Hell no. But if you’re the IDF, there are no good options in the long term. Demographics, dude; no way out of that spiral. The short term is all you’ve got, and in the short term Hamas is going to find out why it’s not a good idea to pretend you’re Hezbollah when you can’t back it up.

The War Nerd
Hamas Ain't No Hezbollah, 6th January 2006

WHAT ABOUT AMERICA?

Americans shouldn't be in the position of endlessly debating Israel's security situation and its endless religious and territorial conflicts with its neighbors. That should be for Israeli citizens to do, not for Americans.

Glenn Greenwald
George Washington's warnings and U.S. policy towards Israel

I TAKE IT YOU DON'T SUPPORT THE GAZA OFFENSIVE?

The Israelis don't want to exterminate the Palestinians; they just want to occupy the land they stole from them, fair and square, by killing 2550 Palestinians for the 17 Israelis killed in the past eight years.

It's eye-opening to see what a Qassam Rocket really looks like. (Not that I'd want one aimed at me, but let's have some proportionality for G-d's sake.) I was imagining V-2s, not what I used to make as a kid when model rocketry was my hobby.

Joshua Snyder
The Western Confucian, 6th January 2006

Qassam Rocket

US-Made Weaponry

WHEN WILL IT END?

The Israelis in Gaza, like the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, are foolishly breeding the next generation of militants and Islamic radicals. Jihadists, enraged by the injustices done by Israel and the United States, seek to carry out reciprocal acts of savagery, even at the cost of their own lives. The violence unleashed on Palestinian children will, one day, be the violence unleashed on Israeli children.

This is the tragedy of Gaza. This is the tragedy of Israel.

Chris Hedges
Party to Murder, 30th December 2008

This just in: Singapore has "extreme weather conditions"

The world's largest observation wheel, the Singapore Flyer, will be closed until investigations into Tuesday's incident are complete.

[...]

The last time a technical glitch occurred was just three weeks ago, on December 4. The wheel was stuck for nearly five hours due to extreme weather conditions and some 70 people were affected. In July, the Flyer stopped due to a minor fault in the braking system.

- Channel News Asia, 23 December 2008 1843 hrs

You heard of science-fiction?

Well, this is news-fiction!

Uniquely Singapore!

via Ben

2008's Nobel Peace Prize Winner

Peacemaker or Puppet?

Throughout the Western world, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari has been widely hailed, where there has been an outpouring of praise for the man and his efforts.

But there is another side to this man that has not yet received attention:

"It really doesn't matter if Paraguay hasn't recognised," Ahtisaari said. "Well over 65% of the wealth of the world has recognised. That matters."

Ahtisaari said Serbia would have to recognize Kosovo if it wanted to join the European Union.

"You can't be poking the EU in the eye [while] saying you want to join EU," he said.

Although he was supposed to be an impartial mediator, Ahtisaari admitted he had sent private messages to all parties soon after taking his role as mediator, that Kosovo's secession was inevitable.

- Kosovo Compromise, Monday, October 20, 2008

Svetlana wryly remarked, "Well, then what about Russia? And India, or China?"

As if this blatant statement does not indicate whose interests Ahtisaari has served in the fiasco leading up to the Kosovar Albanian declaration of independence early this year, the man's "negotiating" techniques are anything but peaceful (emphasis mine):

Ristic reports that as Milosevic listened to the reading of the text, he realized that the "Russians and the Europeans had put us in the hands of the British and the Americans." Milosevic took the papers and asked, "What will happen if I do not sign?"

In answer, "Ahtisaari made a gesture on the table," and then moved aside the flower centerpiece. Then Ahtisaari said, "Belgrade will be like this table. We will immediately begin carpet-bombing Belgrade."

Repeating the gesture of sweeping the table, Ahtisaari threatened, "This is what we will do to Belgrade." A moment of silence passed, and then he added, "There will be half a million dead within a week." Chernomyrdin’s silence confirmed that the Russian government would do nothing to discourage carpet-bombing.

- CounterPunch, October 14, 2008

Many in the West say the continued Chinese presence in Tibet leads to the "mindless destruction" of monasteries, as well as "cultural genocide".

But they remain strangely silent when the very same occurs in Kosovo and Metohija. Hundreds of mediaeval Serbian churches and monasteries, the few remaining strongholds of Kosovo's Christian history, are being emptied and destroyed by Kosovar Albanians as NATO "peacekeepers" nonchalantly watch on. Truly, the Eastern European bias remains alive and well even after the Red Scare has been deposited in history's rubbish bin.

KFOR soldiers helplessly watch as Serbian homes burn near Priština

Gregory Elich concludes:

The selection of Martti Ahtisaari for the Nobel Peace Price was a reward for services rendered. This was a purely political statement, meant to underline an important principle in international affairs. The same Western nations that forcibly carved Kosovo from Serbia are vociferously complaining that independence for South Ossetia and Abkhazia violates international law and the territorial integrity of Georgia. This year’s Nobel Peace Prize affirms the lofty principle that it is only the West that will draw and redraw borders in the manner of 19th-century imperial powers.

It was these imperialist powers who drew the present-day boundaries in the Balkans - sometimes in ink, often in blood. And now they reward this "peacemaker" who has forcibly wrenched Kosovo and Metohija away from Serbia to give Albanian terrorists a country. No Orthodox Christian can ever accept this peace that leaves us with nothing but pain.