Operation pillar of cloud. Israeli assault on Gaza

[magneze]

Has this been posted yet?



http://www.newstatesman.com/politic...iran-chief-rabbi-caught-guard-today-programme

 

[teqniq]

As part of the diaspora living a relatively comfortable life in the UK, I am in no position to speak on behalf of those suffering on a daily basis in Palestine. But I can say that the overall consensus amongst us is that we will only be able to do something once the oil in the ME runs out and therefore outside interference in our politics and the politics in neighbouring countries will end. In the meantime, we feel like we are the sourge of the earth. Americans and Europeans treat us like de facto terrorists. Neighbouring Arab countries like vermin. Hence the helpless feeling.

A ray of sunshine in all this is the Egyptian PM visiting Gaza (ceasefire didn't last 5 minutes I know) and the Tunisian foreign minister is to visit on Saturday in a show of solidarity. Both events would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago.

 

[kebabking]

...I'm no military mind, I played a game of medal of honour once, but how much value do the reservists have really? Surely drafts from a mandatory service x amount of years ago are likely to be shit outs who want to go home, right now

from what i gather, reservists - by and large - aren't going to be that useful in fighting in Gaza/West Bank, i've heard lots of stories about the IA being demoralised by this type of action, and going by previous examples, if the conscripts are demoralised by a certain type of action, then the ex-conscripts will be as well. the IA will be able to use them effectively to protect infrastructure within Israel proper, but progressively less so the closer they are to the fighting in Gaza/WB.

however, from what i've heard/read, that would not apply to reservists mobilised to fight a conventional existential war - my understanding (by no means perfect), is that in that circumstance the reservists would all turn up, and they'd have very high morale - obviously the more recent the service, and the younger/fitter the reservist, the more useful they are. they do quite a bit of training as reservists, and the reservists are specifically trained more for the 'all out war' role than the 'fighting HAMAS' role, because a short, but wide surge in manpower is useful/required for a short, violent conventional war, but not so useful/required for the kind of 'drip-drip' COIN war that this episode, in truth, is just a more publicised version of.

 

[frogwoman]

cast lead definitely changed things in a lot of ways imo

MRJ still coming out with the usual zionist stupidity but they know they can't say too much now, they have to preface even that with "we will say when we disagree with xyz". it may not be acceptable in most of the jewish community to call for a one-state solution (i'm not even sure about that myself tbh) but the leaders know they can't blindly cheerlead everything israel does any more, I am sure that is because of pressure from below

which is a good thing

 

[Fez909]

Has this been posted yet?



http://www.newstatesman.com/politic...iran-chief-rabbi-caught-guard-today-programme

BBC fuckwits! Why did they tell him they were on air? Is there no shred of journalistic pride left in them?

Imagine you're a journalist, knowing that people are talking bullshit to your face every day and then you get someone really speaking their mind, letting their guard down. Surely that's what all journalists should be wanting? Not the Beeb, it seems. They were under no obligation to tell him they were on air, so why did they do it?

 

[DownwardDog]

cheers fellas-so the verdict on past performance says not great in a fair fight?

Compared to every other army in the Middle East, admittedly a low standard, they are the Unsullied.

The air force are as good as anybody, anywhere in the world. The targeting of the Hamas Final Boss was astonishingly good. A moving car in a built up area is very hard to designate reliably. They hit it on an intersection and didn't even knock any branches off the adjacent palm trees. One hundred and eighty.

 

[teqniq]

The sister of a Jewish guy who suddenly died aged 29 and who was part of Obama's election campaign asks the president to reconsider his position on the current Gaza situation.

An open letter to the President

 

[elbows]

I wonder if the IDF propaganda will backfire. Its so vulgar that I can only imagine it going down well with those who are already well onside.

Are there any parody twitter accounts?

 

[magneze]

BBC fuckwits! Why did they tell him they were on air? Is there no shred of journalistic pride left in them?

Imagine you're a journalist, knowing that people are talking bullshit to your face every day and then you get someone really speaking their mind, letting their guard down. Surely that's what all journalists should be wanting? Not the Beeb, it seems. They were under no obligation to tell him they were on air, so why did they do it?

I'm not that surprised tbh. However, I think that some journalists might want to phone up Sacks and ask him what he meant.

 

[DotCommunist]

I wonder if the IDF propaganda will backfire. Its so vulgar that I can only imagine it going down well with those who are already well onside.

Are there any parody twitter accounts?

read in a dalek voice

 

[DotCommunist]

Compared to every other army in the Middle East, admittedly a low standard, they are the Unsullied.

The air force are as good as anybody, anywhere in the world. The targeting of the Hamas Final Boss was astonishingly good. A moving car in a built up area is very hard to reliably designate. They hit it on an intersection and didn't even knock any branches off the adjacent palm trees. One hundred and eighty.

Lets see what they could have won *tows in all the land stolen post ww2*


post betrays conviction that death from above beats toe totoe.Or ranged firefight.Sooner or later it always comes down to boots on the ground

 

[kebabking]

...Sooner or later it always comes down to boots on the ground

it does (ish), but not in the way you probably think. Airpower (and Artillery, before the Crab gets ideas above his station) can turn an army in the feild into a collection of cold, hungry, immobile, leaderless, frightened blokes who will not fight, and will surrender to passing TV crews.

it requires boots on the ground to 'mop up' after you've applied sufficient Air/Artillery to the enemy, and you will get pockets of resistance that, unless you can put a 155mm shell into their sanger, you will have to clear with Infantry, grenades and bayonets - but the truth is that you can break the functionality and morale of a land force with sufficient Air/Artillery force without killing 10% of that force. Israel killing the Hamas bloke in the way they did, and putting it on youtube for all his subordinates to see, have probably dented Hamas' capability and morale far beyond what killing 10% of their standing force would do.

 

[danny la rouge]

Here's a Steve Bell cartoon

Brendan O'Neill and Damian Thompson are complaining about this cartoon and referring to him as "anti-Semitic".
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/d...l-is-a-nazi-says-times-columnist-giles-coren/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/b...still-running-the-world-implies-the-guardian/

That never happens.

 

[teqniq]

Good analysis here:

A Pillar Built on Sand

 

[teqniq]

Well fuck...There were rumours that they may have some AA stuff, maybe they are true

LinaAlsaafin
Reports that an f-16 israeli fighter jet shot down in khan younis, #Gaza. #GazaUnderAttack

 

[DrRingDing]

Well fuck...There were rumours that they may have some AA stuff, maybe they are true

I doubt it.

 

[teqniq]

I doubt it.

I too am sceptical but she's saying it's confirmed now. Anyone else got any info on this?

Sirens in Jerusalem going off, & it's been confirmed, an Israeli f-16 fighter jet has been shot down by the resistance in Khan Younis #Gaza

 

[DexterTCN]

I wonder if the IDF propaganda will backfire. Its so vulgar that I can only imagine it going down well with those who are already well onside...

Obviously targeted at americans.

 

[dylans]

I too am sceptical but she's saying it's confirmed now. Anyone else got any info on this?

Don't know about the war plane claim. but Jerusalem has been hit with a rocket.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Here's a Steve Bell cartoon

Brendan O'Neill...complaining about this cartoon and referring to him as "anti-Semitic".

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/b...still-running-the-world-implies-the-guardian/

Ah, Brendan, the ex-RCP 'libertarian', whose own back catalogue of writing of course features no such allusions to this politician or that country 'pulling the strings' or 'playing puppet master', and certainly not, oh no, in terms of intra-EU power plays over Yugoslavia when the LM group aligned itself with the pro-Serbian nationalist faction of the FCO.

What's that, Brendan? "Comments are closed"?

A fearless warrior for dissident views indeed!

 

[DexterTCN]

Noam Chomsky ‏@daily_chomsky
Sitting in a hotel near the shore, one can hear the machine gun fire of Israeli gunboats driving fishermen out of Gaza’s territorial waters

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[dylans]

They must be aiming for the Knesset.

 

[kebabking]

wouldn't bet on it either: the world is replete with 'we shot down x', and if even half of the claims were true there wouldn't be a single miltary aircraft left in the world, and even if it is true, its not a systemic win - the Paletisnians got one lucky hit after what 200+ sorties? that kind of 'victory' they could well do without...

if they cause the Israelis a 5% loss rate then they're on to something, until then its 'meh'..

 

[DrRingDing]

The military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement in Gaza has announced that it targeted an Israeli aircraft in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday. Al-Qassam Brigade claimed to have used a surface-to-air missile which "hit the target".
If a hit is confirmed, it would be the first time that Palestinians have been able to attack the advanced military aircraft used by Israel to such devastating effect on the civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip.

http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/ne...m-brigades-qused-sam-to-hit-israeli-aircraftq

 

[elbows]

“Israel’s latest attack on Gaza is not a ‘Pillar of Defense.’ It’s a Pillar of War Crimes, which we have a moral obligation to oppose,” says Dylan Penner, steering committee member of Independent Jewish Voices. “This latest atrocity is compounded by the fact that, thanks to Israel’s illegal and inhumane blockade, for the people who live in Gaza there is no escape.”

http://ijvcanada.org/2012/israels-a...of-war-crimes-says-jewish-human-rights-group/

 

[DrRingDing]

Egypt has opened the Rafah crossing 24/7.

http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/4641-egypt-opens-rafah-crossing-247

 

[dylans]

Demonstrations and counter demonstrations in Tel Aviv

“They don’t deserve to live, they need to die”
“May your children die, you dogs”
“Now we want to go back there [to Gaza] and kick out all the Arabs.”
“The people demand more shooting”
“Muhammad is dead”
These were some of the calls from a group of Israelis demonstrating in favor of Israel’s attack on Gaza in the streets of Tel Aviv last night.
Peaceful protests by Palestinian students at Israeli university were met with similar incitement.
In Tel Aviv, across the road, another group of Israelis protested against the assault. “We came here to say that we must end this war immediately,” Knesset member Dov Khenin of the communist Hadash party told the anti-war crowd, “every additional drop of blood is needless.”

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs...aza-burns-israelis-bay-blood-streets-tel-aviv

 

[redsquirrel]

That never happens.

Yeah I was thinking that you couldn't get a better example of your point.
I mean the only way you could claim that Bell's cartoon is anti-semtic is by conflating criticism of Israel with anti-semitism.

 

[rekil]

I suspect Bell got his cartoon idea from this reuters pic that was in the daily mail

 

[TitanSound]

Nothing like subliminal patriotism to galvanize the people