The Kate Moss Of Hezbollah
Who is this man? He keeps popping up everywhere, hoisting dead children!
Ooops, if you're going to stage photos, don't be sloppy about it. Sloppy, sloppy!
Verrrry suspicious timeline. And they got this Condoleeza Rice Qana hate poster made reeeeal fast!
And here's a Canadian National Post piece on how this crowd of dead people; apparently, many or mostly children; ended up in this one building that happened to be so cozy with a Hezbollah rocket launcher:
There is also evidence to suggest that Hezbollah callously imported corpses from elsewhere to pump up the Qana body count -- a macabre and cynical ploy allegedly engineered for the benefit of international reporters.Initially, 57 people were said to have died in the Qana tragedy. But many analysts who have seen the footage point out that some of the dead pulled from the collapsed apartment were in an advanced state of decomposition, far more so than if they had died scant hours earlier. Tellingly, the Lebanese Health Ministry and Human Rights Watch have both said that they could confirm only 28 of the 57 deaths originally reported.
Twenty-eight civilian deaths is certainly horrible enough -- especially when 16 of them are children. But this total is less than half the figure originally reported.
Israel's terrorist enemies have used such tactics before. During the 2002 Battle of Bethlehem, which began after Israel lifted a Palestinian siege at the Church of the Nativity, a fearsome firefight occurring on that town's streets. Palestinians claimed Israeli forces had shelled a hospital and killed dozens of defenceless patients. Later it was discovered, however, that most of the dead were in fact corpses disinterred from a nearby cemetery and smuggled into the hospital -- likely in the back of ambulances -- to be strewn among the damage and so lend credibility to Palestinian propaganda claims that a civilian slaughter had occurred.
Hmmm, and oddly, it seems 15 of the dead were physically or mentally handicapped children. If that's 15 out of 28, that means over half of the dead were disabled. Kinda weird odds, huh?
Are these Hezbollah family values? Strap bombs to teenagers and turn them into suicide bombers, and if a four-year-old's a little slow in the head, use him for rocket bait?
Beyond politics: even if the above is [totally] true, all the current confilct is doing is rallying the Lebanese population behind Hezbollah -- then what?
Here's an interesting piece on Lebanon being Israel's Iraq-- in the Jewish Journal [of all venues]: http://tinyurl.com/e4t77
[tip from LA Observed]
LA Frog at August 6, 2006 9:40 AM
I wonder if the story you mention has anything to do with this.
Orac at August 6, 2006 10:12 AM
I saw that photo. That was so obviously faked, I couldn't believe it got up on a news service. I'm not at home, so I don't have my browser "history" available to me, but there's a site that shows the original of that photo, and shows where the repeated buildings are. All that black smoke was stuck on.
Amy Alkon at August 6, 2006 10:18 AM
I don't disagree with you, LA Frog. The end quote from the link from LA Frog:
Amy Alkon at August 6, 2006 10:26 AM
> This is more than Israel can handle.
Or should have to!
Can someone give me a three-sentence condensation of how this happened? Let's say it's 1946, and everyone's, like, 'Never again, let's get Jews their own state.' Who decided it should be where it is? How is it that the Dennis Pragers of the world are ready to give their full rhetorical support to what is apparently --three generations later-- an insatiable machine for spilling Arab and Jewish blood?
Crid at August 6, 2006 10:49 AM
As previously pointed out, it was a bunch of old farts from my home country. The wikipage on the British Mandate is a fairly quick read, though not 3 sentences.
Gaze at that map for a while, contemplate the fact that what is now Jordan was all part of the original deal, and wonder why Jordan is offering ZERO territory to establish the new state of Palestine...
Stu "El Inglés" Harris at August 6, 2006 11:24 AM
Somebody in a previous comment on another post made a crack about what if the Jewish homeland were in Baja. Again, but for belief in god that makes Jews so attached to "The Western Wall" -- an old crumbling wall with a bunch of folded up notes stuck in it a la a wishing well -- it would seem idiotic to trade so much blood for so little real estate.
But for the god-clingers, you could move all the Jews to Baja and leave the Muslims to fight it out amongst themselves. Without one great demon - The Jews - maybe the wouldn't be so motivated to go to the lengths they do. It is the one thing that unites all these disparate Arabs in the middle east.
And Baja - climate kinda like Israel...they grew oranges in the desert once, they can do it again. Oops, but for the guys with the funny black hats and all the rest of the god believers who have to be in "the promised land."
Guess what? That's exactly what the Muslims think. Who's right? I guess we're left with "whomever dies with the most nukes wins." Or we will be soon.
Amy Alkon at August 6, 2006 12:07 PM
Here in the US, when we'd turn part of a territory into a state, the state would generally get the name of the territory, and the remaining territory would get a new name. That would have been the logical thing to do.
Instead, 3/4 of the Palestine Mandate Territory was converted into the Hashemite Kingdom, a majority of whose residents (including the Queen) are 'Palestinian' (and perhaps as a bit of punishment for the fact that the King's father was the only international leader to back Saddam in Gulf War I) it is his responsibility to correct that historical mistake.
I urge King Abdullah II to do what his great-grandfather and the British authorities should have done, and rename his domain "The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine-Jordan", perhaps with an eye toward deleting the Jordan part later.
There. No more need for Palestinians to be "stateless". Israel gets the quarter of the Palestine Mandate west of the Jordan River and Palestine keeps the 3/4 to the east. The King's father has shown that he is willing to live in peace with Israel. With a permanent treaty affirming the rights of Palestinians and Israelis to work and own property on the other side of the border, those unemployed youths would instead have jobs building the future of both nations.
But then the Arab dictatorships would have no scapegoat to blame their subjects' misery upon.
The Monster at August 6, 2006 3:38 PM
Re: The Jewish state in Baja? Hey - I like Baja as much as anyone.
But if we are being accused of being "colonial interlopers" in a strip of land which was ancient Israel for thousands of years - what are the chances we would be left alone anywhere else?
There was actually a plan to settle the Jews in Uganda - which REALLY would have bound Zionism to 19th-century colonialism. Do you think we would have been left in peace there - or (rightly) hounded out with the end of European colonialism?
Israel is the only place on earth on which the Jews have at least as strong a claim as anyone else. And the international aggreements that created Israel also gave birth to TransJordan - a country three times Israel's size, with an ethnic "Palestinian" population - while providing ANOTHER state for the Arabs living west of the Jordan River.
It's not our fault that these folks have repeatedly chosed to attack our state instead of building theirs. And by the schoolyard rules of geopolitics, they can lose that state if they keep attacking us - Israel is not obligated to keep giving back the pieces after each attack, as if this is some innocent board game, and to fight again and again on the same hillsides.
Ben-David at August 7, 2006 1:49 AM
Forget who has claim to which land, and the notion that Jews wouldn't be "left alone" in, say, Baja. I think my contention is correct: People (Jews in this case) are so attached to irrational belief in god that, even if they could stop this bloodshed by relocating the state, they wouldn't.
I'm not talking about obligation or rights here, but about sense.
Amy Alkon at August 7, 2006 2:03 AM
> which REALLY would have bound
> Zionism to 19th-century colonialism.
Good point
> it's not our fault that these folks
Blame is not the issue. This is not going to get any better... It's been a tit-for-tat blood machine for my whole life. If Iran can soon supply Hizbullah with nuclear weapons, the "schoolyard rules" will no longer apply. At that hour, we'll very badly want this not to be America's problem. If we have to leave something for the next generation to deal with, I want the problem to have a new flavor.
Layne's Baja theory may not make a lick of sense, but at least it represents new thinking. Hitchens call the mediterranean Israel "messianic"; Amy calls it "irrational". A Jewish state on the peninsula to our south could be practical above all else. Maybe it's a backhanded Anti-semitism, but Jewish nature seems characterized more by practicality than fundamentalist impulse.
And if we were to swing the financing and sales correctly, Mexico would become the crown jewel of Mesoamerican commerce. (Though it probably already is.) This might fix some of our immigration issues, too. Birdsy/stonsey.
crid at August 7, 2006 8:50 AM
Crid wrote:
A Jewish state on the peninsula to our south
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
.... which begs the question: what, exactly, would make that place Jewish, or draw world Jewry's loyalty?
The dumbing-down of Jewish identity from binding covenant to ethnic hang-tag has not exactly been a rip-roaring success - not in post-Enlightenment Western Europe, and not in North America. In all these nistorical cases, assimilation and self-negation are the preponderant solutions. Not a great basis for state building.
It hasn't even worked very well in Israel: what got Israel into its current mess was the pursuit of self-abnegating, anti-Zionist policies championed by that class of Israelis most estranged from their Jewish roots - a direct parallel to the crisis of identity and assimilationist angst of non-Orthodox diaspora Jewry.
This is a larger question - for those who believe that G-d is still spinning the threads of this story, it is THE question that these events are impressing upon the Jews of the world. People here in Israel are already predicting a social/religious upheaval similar to what happened after the 1973 war.
Ben-David at August 8, 2006 5:55 AM
> The dumbing-down of Jewish identity
> from binding covenant to ethnic hang-
> tag has not exactly been a rip-roaring
> success
1. No one I know and deeply admire even cares if Jews are observant or not. Here in the States, righteous people let each other select their enthusiasms.
2. There's no cosmic path to be selected for a good outcome. For all we know, it's the failure to change Jewish identity --or to pursue it some obscure and idiosyncratic way-- that's caused the problem. Things that strike you as "self-negation" might strike others as the core of freedom and dignity. Personal example: I think it's absolutely grotesque that so many otherwise gorgeous Jewish girls in Beverly Hills have their noses trimmed... Their faces are forever mishappen and disproportioned thereafter. But am I supposed to tell them what to look like? Why should they listen?
> anti-Zionist policies championed
> by that class of Israelis most estranged
> from their Jewish roots
Dood, (as we say in LA,) I don't care. I'm a long-lapsed Methodist. Your inability to maintain religious ferver for your own political interests is not humanity's problem. My responsibilities --and boundaries-- are concerned with the people I know and love in my community, and they're an ethnic and religoius rainbow.
This is what was mentioned earlier. I'm tired of being told I have to be Zionist to love Jews. It's just not true. I have no homeland, but expect no one to weep about it.
You're saying that this would have gone better, and that the United States and other nations (Lebanon comes to mind) would have been spared the heartache of this summer's war, if only your schoolchildren had been more fastidious of the prayers.
That's going to be a tough sell.
And for the record, where do Jews live better on Earth than North America? Where does anybody live better on Earth than North America?
Crid at August 8, 2006 10:33 AM
Crid - you are free to not care about the continued existence of the Jewish people as a distinct people.
But that kinda voids your opinion about any aspect of the Zionist enterprise - except how it impacts you and your world.
Because the State of Israel was created - by a handful of completely assimilated European Jews, ironically - specifically to insure the preservation and continued existence of the Jewish people as a distinct people.
Ben-David at August 8, 2006 1:16 PM
> voids your opinion about
> any aspect of the Zionist
> enterprise - except how
> it impacts you
Excellent! At last! After all these years, it's not my responsibility! I'm just a lonely hillbilly working in Hollywood, y'know. The savings in foreign aid, to both Egypt and Israel, are going to be stupendous. Can we give the money to inner-city schools? OK, whatever, we'll work that out later. WHERE DO I SIGN, BD?
(And while having zero expertise on these matters, it's hard to believe that anyone on the planet --especially a European Jew-- was feeling comfortably assimililated in 1947.
Crid at August 8, 2006 3:34 PM
OK Crid - but you'll then have to pay retail for our guided missile technology.
Do you really think 40-50 years of American administrations have backed Israel for sentimental rather than strategic reasons - or to win the votes of the less-than-one percent of the American public that are Jewish?
Israel no longer receives non-military aid.
And most of its US military aid is conditional - it must be spent on US-made products, or funds joint US-Israeli projects.
So most of that money is already funding US schools - wherever Lockheed workers live.
Ben-David at August 9, 2006 1:14 AM
> you'll then have to pay retail for
> our guided missile technology.
Baddabing! Seriously, though, *we'll pay it.* By then, Fidel will be dead, and AMD and Intel will both have invested in Cuba because of his wonderful math students. Within ten years, I want to run a multicore laptop with a processor from a Guantanamo fab... To Hell with the sugar.
> funding US schools - wherever
> Lockheed workers live.
Touche. But listen, the most frequent overnight visitor to Clinton's White House was Arafat. We (USA) have been playing both sides of this my whole life, and it's been nothing but a trickle of death. When people said the Iraq invasion was going to be destabilizing, that seemed great! It's time to try something new.
We no longer need Israel as a mechanism to fund our military. Every procurement meeting for the next thirty years is going to include a powerpoint image of someone jumping off the WTC.
I'm glad you're reading and writign here.
Crid at August 9, 2006 10:11 AM
Why should anyone care about the continuation of the Jewish people as a people? I'm more interested in seeing the world become less tribalistic and divisive. The sooner we end the irrational belief in god (and the "my god's better than your god, nyah, nyah, nyah!" that goes with) the less likely it is our lives will end in a nuclear holocaust. I certainly see no reason for the American taxpayers to fund the continuation of the Jewish people as a people. And I say that as somebody who was raised Jewish, and while an atheist, got a lot out of some of the lessons (not the god crap) I learned from studying Hillel, Spinoza, Buber, and their formers.
Amy Alkon at August 9, 2006 11:50 AM
Crid:
We no longer need Israel as a mechanism to fund our military.
- - - - - - - - - -
... that's cute, but not the fundamental motivation for American support of Israel.
During the cold war era, America had its own strategic calculations for backing Israel. And now, as America fights the global war on terrorism, it has its own reasons for supporting democracies like Israel.
Amy:
Why should anyone care about the continuation of the Jewish people as a people?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
... so your posts about the Palestinians etc. are not motivated by any special sense of kinship - just another aspect of the global war on terror?
Do you think the founding of Israel was a mistake?
Does the "tribalism" evident in the Palestinian narrative bother you as much as the nationalism of the Zionists?
Ben-David at August 10, 2006 2:03 PM
> not the fundamental motivation for
> American support of Israel.
So why did you bring it up? My point is precisely that the 'fundamental motivation' is collapsing. Too many bad people are using Israel as an excuse to delay their own improvement. Zionists implicitly argue that there may be no limit to the amount of killing required to continue the project. Being "bothered by" tribalism doesn't authorize killing the tribe.
Not speaking for Amy here, but I see where she's coming from in not wanting to support genetic purity. People must be free to choose their allegiances.
> Do you think the founding of
> Israel was a mistake?
As it is, where it is? Hitchens says (paraphrase) that it's ridiculous to try to turn the world's most sophisticated people into peasant farmers on Arab soil. If an American Jew in Queens (or Venice Beach) has a claim to Israel soil, don't the descendents of the arabs present at the founding of the nation? (That's 40% of the 1948 population)
I hope you're still reading.
Crid at August 11, 2006 12:29 PM
1) I discussed Israeli military aid in response to your own comment!
2) If you think being Israeli - or Jewish - is a matter of genetic or ethnic purity, you have a lot to learn. Start here:
http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_faq_palestine_israel_apartheid.php
http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2006/08/am_echad.html
To sum up:
-Israel is the only place on earth upon which the Jews have any valid claim, any chance of being anything else by "colonial interlopers" or strangers in a strange land.
-America supports Israel for its own strategic reasons. It has supported much more oppressive, undemocratic, and backward countries than Israel - for the same realpolitic reasons. That is the way the game of geopolitics is played.
Ben-David at August 13, 2006 6:37 AM
> Jewish - is a matter of
> genetic or ethnic purity
You're the only one who's made such an assertion, BD. You oh-so-graciously opined that we were "free to not care about the continued existence of the Jewish people as a distinct people." Quite aside from the distinctly American irritation that I take from being told where my freedoms begin and end, your comments hit your target: I *don't* care about maintaining 'distinct' people. That's another American thing.
> only place on earth upon
> which the Jews have any
> valid claim
Frogwash. Their are plenty of Jewish homeowners and shareholders here in the United States. Global accomodation of Jews is far from spotless, but that doesn't mean it's best to carve out a whole new territory for them in contested land by UN fiat.
> It has supported much
> more oppressive,
> undemocratic, and
> backward countries
> than Israel
Saudi Arabia used to make that case, too. Now that Saddam's off the air, it's a tougher comparison for them. Is this really the rhetoric you need to use?
> in response to your own comment!
Nope, you made a wisecrack about Israeli missile technology, and it diminished your argument.
> America supports Israel
> for its own strategic
> reasons
Then we are free to withdraw that support as our strategies and reasoning develop.
Layne's Baja has problems. Among the biggest risks is that it could anger a fresh population of underperforming, less-literate cultures on two new continents. But on the other hand, it very specifically states that Israel would be *buying* this land. And nothing fortifies a righteous claim like compensation. The reason the UN's work can be faulted in 1948, and why it will eventually be faulted for the failure of tomorrow morning's ceasefire, is that the UN has no meaningful authority to tell people how history should flow.
You want a summary? This has been going on --and getting worse- my whole life. Israel has failed.
Next!
Crid at August 13, 2006 9:19 AM
CHILDREN MUST BE INCULCATED AS TO THE BENEFITS OF MASTURBATION IN THE ATTAINMENT AND MAINTENANCE OF A HEALTHY MIND AND A HEALTHY BODY! PENT UP SEXUAL FRUSTRATION IN CHILDREN HAS NEVER BEEN HONESTLY AND ADEQUATELY DISCUSSED AND DEALT WITH IN JEWISH DISCOURSE AND DOCTRINE. MODERN LIFESTYLES AFFORD INDIVIDUALS THE PRIVACY AND HYGIENIC FACILITIES NECESSARY TO MASTURBATE IN A PRIVATE, DIGNIFIED AND SANITARY MANNER. ONE CAN WELL UNDERSTAND THE IRE THAT WAS AROUSED BY MASTURBATING INDIVIDUALS FOUR THOUSAND YEARS AGO WHEN AN ENTIRE LARGE FAMILY LIVED TOGETHER IN A TENT IN AN ARID LOCATION. NOBODY WANTED TO HAVE A WAD OF FLYING JISSUM HIT HIM IN THE EYE OR LAND IN HIS HUMUS. WATER WAS SCARCE AND ONE HAD TO WALK , SOMETIMES LONG DISTANCES, TO THE WELL TO GET IT, IF IT WAS AVAILABLE AT ALL. UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES IT WAS A CHOICE OF WATER FOR DRINKING OR WATER FOR WASHING EJACULATE OFF OF ONE’S HANDS. THIS IS WHY THE EARLY SAGES WERE SO VOCIFEROUS IN THEIR CONDEMNATION OF MASTURBATION. WE JEWISH PEOPLE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A HORNY BUNCH AND, IF THERE WEREN'T THESE SEVERE STRICTURES AGAINST MASTURBATION AT THAT TIME, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN ERRANT CUMSTAINS ALL OVER THE PLACE AND THE SMELL OF FRESHLY RELEASED JISSUM WOULD HAVE WAFTED FAR AND WIDE, EVEN WITHIN THE HALLOWED HALLWAYS OF THE SACRED TEMPLE ITSELF. TIMES HAVE CHANGED. IF PARENTS TODAY STRESS THE BENEFITS OF MASTURBATION TO THEIR CHILDREN, THEY WILL HELP LESSEN THE OCCURRENCE OF STDs, AND UNPLANNED PREGNANCIES. SCHOLARSHIP LEVELS WOULD INCREASE DRAMATICALLY WITH THE RELEASE OF PENT UP ADOLESCENT EJACULATORY TENSION.. IF NECESSARY, PARENTS SHOULD SET AN EXAMPLE FOR THEIR CHILDREN AS TO THE PROPER METHODOLOGY FOR THIS ACTIVITY AND FOLLOW UP AND MAKE SURE THAT THEIR CHILDREN ARE MASTURBATING REGULARLY AT AN OPTIMUM FREQUENCY. KEEPING A MASTURBATION DIARY COULD BE A VERY USEFUL TOOL IN MAINTAINING THE PROPER SCHEDULE. EVERY PARENT SHOULD ASK HIS CHILDREN ON A DAILY BASIS, "DID YOU DO YOUR HOMEWORK AND MASTURBATE TODAY?" OH, OF COURSE, THE CHABADNIKS AND THE FRUMNIKS WILL YELL OUT, "BUT RAMBAM SAID THIS, AND RASHI SAID THAT AND RABBI AKIVA SAID THIS, AND THAT, ABOUT THE EVILS OF MASTURBATION." PROBABLY ALL THREE OF THEM WERE MASTURBATING WHILE THEY WERE WRITING THESE STRICTURES, ANOTHER CASE OF "DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO". WE MUST NOT CONTINUE TO LET OTHERS DO OUR THINKING FOR US UNDER THE GUISE OF RELIGIOUS EXPERTISE. SHALOM AND ZEI GEZUNT!
MOSHE RABEYNU at March 31, 2009 8:15 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2006/08/06/the_kate_moss_o.html#comment-1641143">comment from MOSHE RABEYNUMoishe, there's freedom of speech here, but not freedom of caps lock.
Amy Alkon at March 31, 2009 9:54 PM
Leave a comment