COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Saturday, August 02, 2014

The Zionist State of Israel Going Off the Rails

The Most Dangerous Moment in Gaza
What happens if this conflict comes off the rails?
AUG 1 2014, 8:31 AM ET

It is too early to say anything definitive about the Hamas decision to apparently break the ceasefire and attack an Israeli position, except that if it is true, as reports indicate, that Hamas militants came through a tunnel and carried underground and back into Gaza a live Israeli captive, then this moment could represent not another terrible, dispiriting incident in a terrible, dispiriting mini-war, but a fairly decisive turning point in which all swords are unsheathed. 
This is assuming—as seems probable, but not 100 percent certain—that this raid is even what the Hamas leadership wanted (for what it's worth, its leaders, at the moment, seem to be owning this raid, suggesting that they are indeed doubling down in their war on Israel). If the events of earlier today happened as initial reports depict, then Israel will consider this incident an engraved invitation from Hamas to launch something close to a full-scale invasion of Gaza. Here are the factors that could lead Israel to decide to go all-in:
a) The compact between the Israeli army and Israeli parents is simple: You give us your sons, and we will do whatever we can to keep them alive. This includes conducting operations that get other soldiers killed. There will be near-unanimity in Israel that this soldier should be rescued, regardless of price to Israel, or certainly to the Palestinians in Gaza.
b) There is near-unanimity in Israel already that Hamas represents an unbearable threat. Add in the perfidy of a raid conducted after a ceasefire went into effect and near-unanimity becomes total unanimity. The most interesting article I've read in the past 24 hours is an interview with the Israeli novelist Amos Oz, the father of his country's peace-and-compromise movement, who opened the interview with Deutsche Welle in this manner:
Amoz Oz: I would like to begin the interview in a very unusual way: by presenting one or two questions to your readers and listeners. May I do that?
Deutsche Welle: Go ahead!
Question 1: What would you do if your neighbor across the street sits down on the balcony, puts his little boy on his lap and starts shooting machine gun fire into your nursery?
Question 2: What would you do if your neighbor across the street digs a tunnel from his nursery to your nursery in order to blow up your home or in order to kidnap your family?
With these two questions I pass the interview to you.
The point is, if Amos Oz, a severe critic of his country's policies toward the Palestinians, sounds no different on the subject of the Hamas threat than the right-most ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing cabinet, then there will be a national consensus that it is not enough to manage the Hamas rocket-and-tunnel threat, but that it must be eliminated if at all possible. This doesn't mean that the Israeli government wants to see the Hamas government in Gaza replaced. What it could mean is that the Israeli public demands that its leaders ensure them that the tunnel threat, in particular, is neutralized in a decisive way. 
c) For Israelis who are immune, unlike Amos Oz, to the criticism of outsiders, the world's inability, or unwillingness, to understand the Hamas threat in the way that Oz (and most everyone else in Israel) understands it suggests that there is nothing Israel can do, short of national suicide, to stop the condemnation of their country. Which, of course, frees Israel, in their minds, to take whatever action it deems necessary to take. In other words, don't be overly surprised by news later today of a massive Israeli army reserve call-up.

More later, alas.

8 comments:

  1. So much for the coal mines of Pennsylvania.

    The Israeli are stuck, between that proverbial rock and a hard place.

    ReplyDelete

  2. There goes the price support that Sodastream was enjoying

    Soros fund drops shares in Israel’s SodaStream

    Soros Fund Management, the family office of the billionaire investor George Soros, has sold its stake in SodaStream, the soda making appliance producer that profits from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and was made popular by actress Scarlett Johansson’s endorsement.

    The decision comes as a number of big international investors, including the fund linked to the Microsoft founder Bill Gates, join in a burgeoning financial boycott of Israel amid a push by the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement and other groups seeking more rights for Palestinians.

    SodaStream, headquartered in the Israeli city of Lod, has its main factory in the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim.

    “Soros Fund Management does not own shares of SodaStream,” Michael Vachon, a spokesman for the fund, told The National, declining to comment further on when and why it sold the shares.

    Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/business/industry-insights/economics/soros-fund-drops-shares-in-israels-sodastream#ixzz39H7BT6en
    Follow us: @TheNationalUAE on Twitter | thenational.ae on Facebook

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There are some that will tell us that it does not matter.
      That it is all agitprop

      They would be wrong.

      It is the true existential threat to the NASI regime in Israel.

      Delete
    2. And with each round that impact Gaza, the BDS Movement grows, garners support and becomes the more respectable response to Israeli tyranny.
      .

      Delete
    3. “Soros Fund Management does not own shares of SodaStream,”

      The decision comes as a number of big international investors, including the fund linked to the Microsoft founder Bill Gates, join in a burgeoning financial boycott of Israel amid a push by the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement and other groups seeking more rights for Palestinians.


      Delete
  3. The Bard of MurdockSat Aug 02, 06:27:00 PM EDT

    Israel’s Attempted Genocide Must Fail
    Lessons from genocide in "Canada"
    by Denis Rancourt / August 2nd, 2014

    The Zionist Project is to eradicate all Palestinians who make claim to a home in Palestine. The Zionist Project is exactly what Israel has been doing since its artificial creation.

    The Zionist Project is planned incremental dispossession and an on-going attempted genocide, and this has been repeatedly and explicitly expressed by its architects and executioners. The Zionist Project as attempted genocide is also expressly cheered-on by many Israeli citizens and by members of the Zionist diaspora of all religions.

    The Israeli apartheid is not meant as a sustained apartheid. It is an increment in an attempted genocide that accompanies a vast racist pillaging of land and resources (water, gas).

    The attempted Israeli genocide, in its on-going mid-phase, is not unlike the now-accomplished Canadian genocide against First Peoples. First there were population displacements, then exterminations, then land treaties, then reservations, then forced cultural assimilation for any survivors, then cultural normalization of the crimes, and never any possibility of return or reparations.

    A main difference is that Canada’s genocide is virtually complete, whereas Israel’s attempted genocide is in full swing and unfolding militarily before the world, in a time of instant and distributed electronic publishing, and in a time when other genocides have been named, exposed, condemned, and studied and understood.1

    Another difference is that Canadian politicians are — these days, in the end-game of the Canadian genocide — lying cover-up artists, whereas Israeli politicians are straight-up, and are supported by an overtly and enthusiastically racist population.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I put up that article earlier.

    Today the news is, last I read, the Israelis are pulling back a bit.

    Maybe there are no more homicide tunnels to be found in that area.

    Casino time !

    Cheers !

    ReplyDelete
  5. GAZA CITY — Defying international pleas for a truce, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said military forces will continue the ground operation in Gaza at full force until it accomplishes its goal of destroying Hamas tunnels.

    Speaking at a press conference late Saturday, Netanyahu said that after those tunnels are destroyed, Israeli forces will "regroup" in accordance with their own security needs.

    "We promise the citizens of Israel to bring back calm and order, and we will continue to operate until this goal is reached no matter how much time it takes,'' he said.

    Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum dismissed the Israeli leader's remarks as "confused."

    "We will continue to resist until we achieve our goals," he said.

    ReplyDelete